Truth and Justice: The Third Year
by JC Roberts
Summary: A new World's Finest team sees the crime rate in Gotham plummet. Personal crises, amped-up supervillains and a vengeful madman threaten the Justice League. And Batman finally allows himself to be happy. There's also a wedding. Future AU.
1. Chapter 1

* * *

Endless thanks to beta reader arg914 and technical advisor, The Five Foot Ninja. Here we go again, guys.

This story is dedicated to Kent and Andy.

* * *

"_And you save me in the nick of time." _

_**-**__**"I'm Feeling You," Carlos Santana**_

* * *

The siren cut off in mid-keen as the ambulance skidded sideways against the curb of Gotham General Hospital's emergency room entrance and the back doors exploded open. The driver, a lanky Latino woman in her late 20s, jumped out of the cab and rushed to help the paramedic ease the gurney onto the concrete sidewalk. They were met halfway across the ER floor by a worn young resident as they rolled the patient urgently toward an empty bed.

"Booze and barbs," said the paramedic, as the doctor aimed a penlight at the unconscious man's pupils.

Shaking his head, the resident popped the sterile wrapper from a naso-gastric tube and started easing it down his patient's nose. He did not wonder why the man had tried to kill himself. There were only a handful of reasons and he'd heard them all.

"Any idea what he took?" the resident asked, glancing down at the large, lifeless middle-aged man.

"Pentobarbital," replied the driver. "Looks like he helped himself to leftovers from some surgery his butler had a while back."

The resident gave her a quizzical look as he fastened a bag of saline and a vacuum pump to the nasal tube. "_Butler_? Who is this guy?"

"Bruce Wayne," said the driver.

"You're kidding."

The paramedic shrugged. "Even billionaires get the blues."

* * *

It was not Lois Lane's job to scan the wire services for news; an assistant city editor had been assigned that responsibility. This did not stop Lois from spending most mornings obsessively refreshing her link to the Associated Press newswire. If she had a fault as managing editor of the Daily Planet, it was her inability to delegate. She was aware that this tendency to over-manage irritated some of the city desk staff, and she usually tried to restrain herself, but Lois had backslid considerably since returning to work the week before. The reaction to her intrusiveness had been less defensive than usual; everyone understood that she was trying to cope with the loss of her daughter.

She had probably gone overboard the previous day, sharpening all of her secretary's pencils while she was at lunch, but when Nadia returned to her desk a few minutes early, she had merely looked at Lois through sympathetic hazel eyes and waited for her boss to mumble an excuse and hurry back to her office.

Today she was on a mission: Clark and their son, Clay, had finally returned to work. Lois wanted them to have a good first day back, as much as they could have a good anything at this point, and she was combing the wire service for stories that they would find engaging, without being too demanding. She had eliminated a few stories that were intriguing, but involved a death, and had sent Clay out not long ago to interview the latest rap star to become infatuated with the struggle for social justice. Lois had confused the rapper for a rocker Clay liked; he had apathetically explained the difference and gone off to do the interview. Now she was looking for an assignment for Clark, with less success: She couldn't find a single story among the latest batch that didn't somehow involve death or superheroes.

"So the boys are back today." Nadia stood by Lois' door, a steaming mug in her hand. Nadia had been at the Planet longer than Lois; she had been Perry White's secretary. Lois had made it clear that she did not expect her to fetch coffee, but Nadia was old school. She considered it part of her job.

Lois looked up from her computer. "How are they doing out there?"

Nadia handed slid a coaster toward Lois and carefully lowered the cup of black coffee. "Clay was hanging with some of the guys before you sent him out. But Clark…. He's just sitting at his desk, pretending to read the paper. He doesn't look like he wants anyone to talk to him."

Lois nodded. "It's been… hard."

"I know," said Nadia. She had lost her husband of 41 years a few months earlier. "Becca asked if you'd be willing to move the budget meeting to 10:30."

Lois's eyes slide to the clock on the bottom corner of her computer. It was a few minutes before nine. "Sure. Anything else?"

Nadia shook her head. "Want me to close the door?"

"Please," Lois said. She waited until she was alone to press both palms against her eyes. Then she returned her attention to her computer. The screen had refreshed itself while she'd been talking; three new bulletins sat at the top of the queue: _Midvale Mayor Marches for School Funding; Metros' Quarterback Faces Shoulder Surgery, Gotham Billionaire Attempts Suicide._

Lois seized her mouse and clicked frantically on the third item. As soon as the window opened, her eyes found the billionaire's name. It was only a two-sentence blurb, but Lois did not bother to read it. She scrambled to the door and flung it open, shouting across the crowded newsroom for her husband.

* * *

Clark tugged his tie up against the bottom of his collar as he hurried down the fire stairs from the roof of Gotham General's towering parking garage. He had just gotten off the phone with Lois, who had reported being stonewalled by the hospital's patient information desk. Operators had been fielding inquiries all morning from callers nosing for details about Bruce Wayne's apparent attempt to kill himself. She had not been able to find out what floor he was on, or even how he was doing.

The flight had not exerted Clark, but as he walked into the hospital lobby, his heart was galloping. He looked past the admissions desk, then up at the ceiling, searching through the hospital's cinderblock walls for a sign of Alfred. On his third sweep of the hospital, Clark saw Dick Grayson and Tim Drake standing alone in a sixth floor waiting room. Dick looked sad and worried; Tim furious. Clark shut his eyes for a moment, blocking out hundreds of other voices to focus on their conversation.

"… should have known better than to get involved with anyone that close to Lian," Tim was saying bitterly. "What the hell did she do to him?"

Clark opened hardened eyes as Dick's fading voice protested, "It wasn't like that…."

As the elevator doors closed behind him, Clark leaned back against the padded elevator wall, tilting his face toward the ceiling. Just days before Martha's death at the hands of Parallax, Lois had come to the conclusion, with almost no evidence, that Bruce had somehow maneuvered their daughter into bed. Clark had not believed it, had in fact considered the idea preposterous. But reports of Bruce's quiet melt-down at Martha's funeral – and now this… overdose – forced Clark to admit there had probably been more going on between the two of them than he had wanted to believe. Tim seemed to think so. He and Dick obviously knew more than Clark about his daughter's relationship with their mentor.

He did not understand how it had happened; the last time he had seen Martha and Bruce together, they had been arguing so vehemently that Clark felt he had to step in for the good of the team. He had asked them to stop fighting. Numbness spread across his chest. He should have left them alone. This was probably his fault.

The door slid open with a ding, and Clark walked leadenly down the hallway toward the waiting room. A hospital security guard stood beside the door. He stepped forward as Clark approached.

"You have a badge?" he asked, staring pointedly at Clark's empty lapels. Before he could answer, a tired voice behind him said, "It's OK. He's family."

Clark had rocketed to Gotham General truly fearing for his colleague's life, but being characterized as a member of Bruce's family suddenly offended him. He forced his lips together against a bitter denial and turned to a washed-out looking Roy Harper, who had apparently just walked off another elevator. Roy gave him a one-armed hug that Clark did not return.

"It had to be an accident," Roy told him. "He wouldn't…." He broke off and stared at the floor, then looked back at Clark, who had still not uttered a word.

"I hate to ask you," Roy said awkwardly. "But now that you're here, I kind of need your help."

* * *

The pain came first, dragging him into an unwilling consciousness. His nose and throat were burning; his stomach raw. Everything hurt – his screaming head, his constricting chest. And he was in a hospital. He could smell it: the Lysol and the latex.

"He's waking up. Mr. Wayne?"

"My…," Bruce whispered through cracked lips. "My doctor…."

"I'll get him."

_No_, he thought as he felt the nurse leave the room. His doctor was a woman. He tried to open his eyes, but the glare of sun coming through the hospital window stung and he kept them closed. A second nurse in the room apparently noticed his discomfort. He could hear the blinds closing and he tried again to open his eyes.

"Arkham… Asylum," he managed. "My doctor..."

The nurse standing next to him was very quiet for a moment. "Your doctor here is Dr. Marcos. He's on his way."

And Bruce remembered: Martha had been his doctor and she was dead. Suddenly the physical pain wasn't enough, he needed more; he needed it to hurt so much that he couldn't think, so badly that it would eclipse the anguish that was spreading through him with more force than mere bodily injury could ever bring.

There was whispering at the door, and footsteps, then the scrape of metal against tile and a heavier presence by his bed.

"Mr. Wayne?"

Bruce opened his eyes. A squat, balding man sat next to him, an open chart in his hand.

"I'm Dr. Marcos," the man said. "Do you know why you're here?"

Bruce rolled his head toward him. "I… ah… fell." His eyes moved to a bandage wrapped around his left forearm. "I… there was broken glass?"

Dr. Marcos' impassive eyes darted from the chart to Bruce. "What kind of glass?"

He tried to remember. He had been so tired. "I couldn't sleep."

"And so you…"

"I had something to drink." He had downed an entire bottle of brandy. Bruce blinked. "And I took something else. Melatonin." Alfred had been taking the herbal supplement as a sleep aid. Martha's death had been devastating to the old man; he had loved her dearly. No one at Wayne Manor had been sleeping well since Parallax had taken her from them. Bruce had not expected the melatonin pills to work for him, but he had been desperate enough to sneak into Alfred's bathroom and swallow a handful of them.

"Melatonin." The doctor's voice sounded skeptical.

Bruce frowned at the man's tone. "I think I took too much."

Marcos skimmed the chart again, then closed it. "Mr. Wayne. We found six partially digested Pentobarbital capsules in your stomach."

"Pento…" The name sounded familiar. Bruce could not remember why.

"Barbiturates," said Marcos, examining him openly now. "Which in combination with alcohol generally equals death." He added gently. "You've had a loss recently."

Bruce strained against a fog of confusion and pain to put these seemingly disparate statements together. It took him nearly a minute to understand what the doctor was getting at.

Alarmed, he said, "I didn't try to kill myself."

Marcos' expression did not change. "A lot of people find it difficult –"

"I did _not_ try to kill myself," Bruce repeated, more adamantly. He stared at the doctor in disbelief. Is that what everyone would think?

In a soft voice Bruce found patronizing, Marcos asked, "Tell me about Martha."

Bruce squeezed his eyelids together. "Get out of here," he whispered fiercely.

The doctor sat there for a few moments, then Bruce heard the legs of the chair drag across the floor again and the sound of rubber soles moving away from him.

He thought about the orange Rite Aid bottle with the torn label and realized now what he had not in his drunken state: Melatonin did not come in pharmacy vials. Alfred had needed something stronger to cope with Martha's death and he hadn't wanted Bruce to worry about him. Bruce understood. He had been hiding his drinking from Alfred for the same reason. He wondered where the old man was now; he must be frantic.

Bruce had spent almost two years fighting his feelings for Martha Kent, but Alfred had been determined to bring them together from the moment she walked into his kitchen. He believed her Bruce's last chance to find love and he did not care that she was half Bruce's age or Clark's daughter. When Alfred learned that Martha was Superwoman, he had considered it confirmation that his instincts were correct: She would understand Bruce and his life's work more than anyone else possibly could: They walked the same path.

Alfred had been right, Bruce thought. And he had been a fool. He had fled from the one woman who might truly be called the love of his life and his change of heart had come too late. In truth, death would have been a welcome respite from the loss and regret that overwhelmed him. But not by his own hand. He would never to that to Alfred, or to Dick or Tim. And he could not do that to Martha, who would have been horrified to see how badly Bruce was reacting to her death.

He needed to talk to Alfred right away; he had to make sure the old man was all right. Bruce flexed his fingers toward the button that would bring the nurse, but his arm felt so heavy that he could not move it, and the sleep that had eluded him for nearly three weeks engulfed him.

_

* * *

_

He knew it was a dream, but when he saw her, suspended in light and fog, he pushed irresistibly toward her.

"_Bruce," Martha asked, her voice an ache in his chest. "Why wouldn't you let us be together?"_

_He could not seem to reach her. She did not move, but no matter how many forward steps he took, she seemed just as far away._

"_I was afraid that I was too old for you," he said. "That being with me would destroy your relationship with your family… and I was afraid… I would mess it up."_

_Martha's dark brown eyes merged with his. "You were just afraid," she said, and disappeared._

* * *

She ran her hand through her tangled brown hair, shaking out a shower of dirt and sand, brushing stray grains away from her face. It was a futile gesture – the relentless winds wove hundreds of new granules into her curls and clothes with every gust, and they were endless.

For as long has she had been here, there had been no night, just an eternal murky day. It might have been months, and it was certainly weeks, since the explosion of light and pain had brought her here; she had expected to be rescued long ago. It was only her sitting practice, the hours of meditation, that had steadied her mind over the long wait.

She was hungry, now, a feeling she had been ignoring, as the one source of nutrition on this world was an olive-colored cactus-like tree whose fruit was bitter and spongy. _Aversion,_ she thought, as she slogged across the sand, _doesn't do a thing to make it taste any better._

She tugged a chunk of flesh from the plant and brought it to her mouth, feeling, rather than hearing the presence behind her.

"Kind of short for Superman's daughter, aren't you?" asked Parallax, stepping over to the tree and tearing free a piece of fruit.

Martha Kent tilted her head toward him and offered him an open smile. "You've come crawling back, I see," she said.

It was only the second time she'd seen him since they'd arrived at this place. The first time, Martha had expected him to kill her, but he had merely mocked her as she sat in meditation and then flown away. She had not been able to follow him. Unlike Parallax, Martha could not breathe beyond the planet's atmosphere and the perennial clouds of dust and sand had blocked a sun that, from what she could tell, was at least yellow. She was at nowhere near full strength. She had quickly determined that if a means of escape existed, it was not in her power to find it.

This had not concerned Martha at first; she was sure her Justice League teammates would save her. Her father would never give up on finding her, nor would Lian or the man she hoped would soon be her lover. They must be struggling, frustrated by their inability to reach her. Wherever she was, it was nowhere near Earth. Martha had tirelessly tried to contact Meera Buhpathi, the team's telepath, with no success. She had hoped that Midori, her brilliant teammate from Colu, might have been able to trace the path of particles from the explosion, but even if she had, they might be having trouble reaching her. Parallax had disabled their shuttle.

But that still left Gren, Martha thought, as she winced through a mouthful of the unpleasantly pungent fruit. A Green Lantern didn't need a spaceship to get around.

Parallax studied her grimace, looked at the chunk of plant in his own hand and concentrated until it had changed form, morphing into what appeared to be a dark green chicken leg. Martha smirked.

"It doesn't make it taste any better," Parallax informed her. He took a bite and added, "So it turns out, Dr. Kent, that this planet is the jewel of this particular universe."

Martha frowned. "Universe? Or do you mean galaxy?"

Parallax shrugged. "I can usually get around the galaxies in our universe," he said. "What's the matter?" he added as her face grew tense. "Am I extinguishing your dreams of a blissful reunion with Dad and your friends?"

The hours of meditation had been useful: Martha felt the panic before it consumed her and breathed it away.

"They'll find me," she said.

"They've most likely had your funeral by now," Parallax countered. "That explosion you made probably looked pretty fatal."

Martha squinted at him through a veil of sand. "_I_ made? Whose bomb was it?"

"That wasn't a bomb, Dr. Kent," Parallax said irritably. "You made it explode by slamming it into me."

Martha averted her stunned face and wrapped her arms around her thin shoulders. "What was it?"

"I'm not quite ready to reveal my nefarious plans," Parallax said sardonically. "In the movies, that's always where the villain goes wrong."

She looked up at him. "Are you a villain? I thought you envisioned yourself as some kind of savior."

Parallax gave her a wise smile. "You work at Arkham, don't you? Criminal psychiatrist?"

Martha nodded.

"I'm not a criminal," Parallax said. And with a glance upwards, he hurtled away. Martha walked slowly back to the spot where she'd been sitting. It took a long time for her to calm her mind; Parallax had given her too much to think about.

* * *

It was dark when Bruce opened his eyes again; only a muted emergency light illuminated the room from a rectangular ceiling panel. A soft hum emanated from the ventilation system and he could hear the muffled voices of tired nurses outside his closed door. His eyes dropped to the back of his right hand; he hadn't noticed the IV before. He wondered what they were giving him. Whatever it was had seemed to make his headache fade. His nose and throat still hurt, though, from the tube he supposed they'd used to pump his stomach. He turned his head to see if there was water by his bedside.

His eyes moved immediately past the night table; he was not alone. Clark sat in a dark, battered visitor's chair, his forehead cradled against a large palm, his glasses dangling from his fingertips. Bruce hadn't seen him since the funeral. Even in the dark, he could see the hollow rings around Clark's eyes and the streak of gray in his stubble that had not been there before. The death of his daughter had aged Superman as time could not.

He was resting, but not asleep. Bruce continued to study him until Clark sensed that he was being watched and looked up. His eyes reflected a spectrum of pain – mostly grief, but also bewilderment and the kind of hurt that comes from having been unexpectedly betrayed.

"You didn't have to come here," Bruce said. "You have enough to…" His eyes fell to the blanket that was bunched up around his waist. "I wasn't trying to kill myself."

"I know," Clark said quietly.

"How do you know?" Bruce asked. He was sure Marcos had described him as suicidal.

"You're still alive," Clark said. He twirled his glasses between a thumb and forefinger.

Bruce nodded, but he was not relieved. Clark had come here for answers. He deserved them. But Bruce did not feel capable of giving them yet.

"Was this because of Martha?" Clark asked tentatively.

Bruce rolled his head away.

A tremor in his voice, Clark asked, "Were you lovers?"

After a moment, Bruce said, "No." He was no longer sure this was true, but Clark needed the simpler answer.

It took them both a while to recover from the question. In the silence, the whirr of the ventilation system seemed abnormally loud.

"But you were in love with her," Clark said finally.

Bruce didn't answer. After a few moments, Clark stood up.

"Get some rest," he said. "I'll let everyone know you're awake."

As he reached the door, Bruce whispered, "I told her… I wasn't." Clark stopped. "Right before we got the call… about Parallax."

Clark turned to look at him and his features were as impassive as Batman's had ever been.

"I'm sure she could tell," he said, "That you were lying."

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Paths to peace and the road to Hell._

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Another round of thanks to beta reader arg914!

* * *

Dick pushed past the irate nurse and strode down the corridor, glancing into darkened rooms in search of Bruce. He head Tim's voice behind him, attempting to mollify the woman with promises of a quick visit, "Just to see if he's OK," but her response suggested she was heading straight for hospital security.

Clark Kent's disappearance from the waiting room and brief, stony return to announce that Bruce was awake had scared Dick. Twice during the long afternoon, his cell phone and Clark's had chirped simultaneously and Dick knew that Martha's father had programmed his phone to download the same news bulletins he had. By mid-afternoon, all of them were suggesting a link between Bruce Wayne's suicide attempt and the recent death of the Justice League's doctor, who had been seen with Bruce at the Police and Firefighter's Ball on the night she was murdered and at another social event several months earlier. Dick had chanced a few surreptitious looks at Clark after reading the bulletins: the first round had seemed to leave him devastated; after the second, grimness had set into his usually placid features.

Dick did not know how Clark had managed to get past the cadre of nurses who were monitoring Bruce's room, but he was sure Bruce was in no condition for a confrontation with a vengeful father. Clark had always seemed like a mild kind of guy, but Dick knew how he'd feel if he learned one of his daughters was involved with an older man with Bruce's reputation. When he finally found him, Dick was relieved to find Bruce staring vacantly at a wall, apparently unharmed.

Bruce looked up at him, then stared at the foot of the bed. "Sorry," he said quietly.

"Don't be stupid," Dick responded, as Tim rounded into the room. Dick thought himself the one who should apologize. He had helped Bruce into a limousine after Martha's funeral and returned to his dual life as a private investigator in Bludhaven and Nightwing. When he had called the manor several times over the following weeks, Alfred had described Bruce's state of deep depression and exhaustion, but Bruce would not come to the phone. Dick had assumed Martha's death was something he needed to cope with on his own; it had been a bad miscalculation.

"How do you feel?" asked Tim, leaning forward in the chair Clark had sat in not long earlier. But Bruce's eyes had moved to the door.

"Alfred?" he asked, shooting a concerned look at Dick.

"He's at home," said Dick. He tried not to look at Tim, but Bruce was not an easy man to fool.

"What's wrong?" he asked immediately. There was an edge of fear in his voice.

"He's all right," said Tim hastily. "He's had a pretty rough day."

Bruce nodded and Dick watched him add another layer of guilt to what already seemed like a mountain.

"So… um… Clark was here," Dick said hesitantly. "He got past the nurses."

Bruce's eyes moved back to his feet. "He's a good reporter," he said softly. Dick glanced at Tim, who shook his head. Another subject best left for a different time.

After a brittle moment, Bruce asked, "How did the doctor…. How did he know about Martha?"

"_Shit_," whispered Tim angrily as he and Dick exchanged a meaningful look.

"Not from any of us," Dick said.

"Then how?" asked Bruce, in a tone that demanded a quick, direct answer.

"Page Five," said Tim in disgust. Bruce gave him a hard look, then swung his feet over the edge of the bed so quickly that Dick felt himself lunging forward as if to catch him.

"Get me out of here," Bruce ordered, peeling away the tape that held his IV.

Uncertainly, Dick said, "I don't know if that's –"

Bruce slid the IV cannula from the back of his hand. "I'm not being treated by someone who gets his patient information from a gossip column." He tried to stand, but his legs buckled. Dick grabbed him and helped him back onto the narrow hospital bed, but he could feel Bruce's determined resistance and knew there was no point in arguing with him.

Tim had come to the same conclusion. "I'll go back to the house and get your clothes," he said wearily.

* * *

Bruce frowned when Dick pulled the car over half a mile before they reached the entrance to Wayne Manor and called Roy Harper on his cell phone. Tim, leaning forward from the back seat, explained that Roy was at the mansion; he had been taking care of Alfred.

As Dick put a hand over his free ear so he could concentrate on the phone conversation, Tim added, "You might as well know. There was kind of a mess this morning."

"Besides the one I made?" Bruce asked tiredly.

"Well, yeah." Tim seemed sorry to have had to bring the matter up. "There was a little problem with the police."

Bruce twisted around in the bucket seat.

"It's just that Alfred told them that the whole thing was his fault because he had told you the bottle of pills on his sink was melatonin," Tim said. "His motives for doing that were…. temporarily in question."

"Oh my God," whispered Bruce. He thought he might have to go back to the hospital. His chest was on fire.

Dick did a double take at the two of them and hung up on Roy.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked Tim. "Don't tell him that now."

"He needs to know," Tim said soberly. "Before he sees Alfred."

Dick sighed and looked at Bruce reassuringly. "Look, it's OK. It took a while for Arsenal and Superman to get the police to drop the investigation, but it's done."

"Superman," Bruce repeated numbly.

"I don't think I've ever seen him so upset," Dick said. "You were still out when they finally wrapped things up. I wouldn't be surprised if he drops by tomorrow."

Bruce closed his eyes and slumped against the seat. "Take me home," he whispered.

"OK. But we're going to have to go in a back entrance," Dick said. "The paparazzi we dodged at the hospital discovered that you checked out against medical advice. Roy says they're already camped out in front of the house."

* * *

The mansion was quiet when Dick helped Bruce in through a door he hadn't used in months; it opened into a small enclosed sun porch in the east wing, where Martha had spent three days in meditation with the Dalai Lama. Alfred had tidied up the room, but two meditation cushions remained against the back wall. Bruce and Martha had continued to use them after Pat returned to Tibet, following up most of their Sunday training sessions with an hour on the cushions.

Bruce avoided looking at the plump, rounded pillows as Tim stepped into the room and locked the door. It took the three men longer than it might have to wind their way to the living room; Bruce moved unsteadily and twice had to stop to regain his balance. He knew he had probably left the hospital days earlier than he should have, but he did not want to look at that doctor again, and he needed to see for himself that Alfred was OK.

Roy was waiting for them in the living room.

"I finally got him to get some sleep," said Roy, as Bruce looked anxiously around the living room for the old man. "He was worried to death about you."

"But he's all right?" Bruce asked, as Dick helped him ease into a recliner. Roy nodded.

"Thank you," Bruce said, his eyes conveying what the two inadequate words could not.

Roy shook his head. "Don't worry about it." He hesitated. "I'll – maybe we'll talk more later." Bruce nodded. Whatever Roy had to say about Clark's involvement in getting the police to drop the investigation would have to wait until they were alone. Bruce wasn't sure he was ready to hear about it anyway.

A shuffling sound came from the staircase. All four men watched Alfred's slippered feet move shakily down the steps.

Roy ran a hand through his hair. "I'll, um – I'll be at Lian's," he said, ignoring how his daughter's name made Tim bristle. "I'll be back tomorrow."

Dick clasped Roy's hand and the men exchanged a quick embrace. Tim thanked Roy a little more stiffly, but followed when Dick glanced at Bruce, then indicated with a jerk of his head that Tim should accompany him as he walked Roy to the door.

Bruce had half-raised himself from the recliner when Alfred's pale blue eyes fell upon him. He had never looked so old, Bruce thought, nor so tired, not even after Martha's funeral.

"They've released you?" Alfred asked, the doubt in his voice offsetting his hopeful expression.

"Well not exactly," Bruce mumbled as his eyes moved to Alfred's bandaged fingers. "You're hurt."

With a dismissive gesture that only seemed to magnify the thickness of the bandages, Alfred said, "A small cut." Bruce remembered him making a similar pronouncement about the blood clot that had almost killed him.

The old butler took a wobbly step toward Bruce, his creased face awash with remorse.

"If you can possibly forgive me –" he began.

"I stole your drugs," Bruce said. "You're not the one who needs to ask for forgiveness."

Alfred's eyes began to shimmer. "I should have noticed that you were drinking."

Bruce moved forward on unsteady legs. "I should have realized I wasn't the only person in this house who was in pain."

The fragility in the air between them seemed to solidify, strengthen. Then Bruce, whose gaze had dropped to the floor, looked up at the man who had been his father since he was eight years old.

"Look," he said. "You don't want me to have to tell you how I feel about you again, do you?"

Alfred stepped back. "Please, no," he said. And then a tiny smile trembled at the corners of his pale lips. Bruce felt the muscles in his own mouth lifting and was pretty sure it was a reflection.

* * *

Parallax returned sooner than Martha expected: one murky day might have passed; she wasn't sure. She had come to the troubling conclusion in that time that no rescue was imminent. She was going to have to get home by herself. She had no idea how to do this, but there were a few cardinal principles her father had taught her early on, and they had cropped up again in Bruce's training sessions: Keep your eye on you enemy and make yourself strong.

As a little girl, she had learned a third survival skill from her mother: When you get lost in a shopping mall, stay where you are. Martha had remained near the site where she and Parallax tumbled painfully into the desolate world; she was sure whatever door had closed behind them would open here. She suspected Parallax believed this as well. The increasing frequency of his appearances did not seem to stem from a craving for human companionship.

"So what kind of father is Superman?" he asked idly, as Martha shrugged off the tiny piles of sand that accumulated on her shoulders whenever she sat for long periods. "Was he a doting daddy or was he never quite satisfied, with you having only half his powers and all?"

Clark would have been proud of her if she had been a street sweeper, but Martha found the question interesting enough to entertain it.

"There's nothing wrong with expecting the best from the people you love," she said, hoping the touch of defensiveness sounded genuine. She thought she might have pulled it off; the weeks of meditation had given Martha a possession of herself that she had not known before.

Parallax appeared unimpressed. "Yeah. That's why 'overcompensates' appears in boldface in the file the Guardians have on you."

"The Guardians have a file on me?" She didn't think she liked that.

"Don't flatter yourself. It's just a couple paragraphs," said Parallax. "They've got one on your whole crew, and just about every other 'superhero' on Earth.

"Since I'd been away for a while," he added. "I wanted to see who was most likely to give me the most trouble when I dropped by on my little errand. The Justice League still tops the list."

Martha pushed back the tangle of gritty hair from her face and said skeptically, "I find it hard to believe the Guardians would let you anywhere near them."

The bitterness in Parallax's voice was unmistakable. "I don't have to be near Oa to access what the Guardians have, Dr. Kent. And there's not much they can do about it."

She drew a circle in the sandy ground with a bare toe. Roy had given the team a brief history lesson on Parallax as they raced to the battle at Barringer Crater, but Martha hadn't needed one. When she was growing up, her family visited the memorial gardens planted in honor of the former Green Lantern every year. Clark had made sure his children knew the complete legacy of Hal Jordan, not just its tragic finish.

"My father said the old Guardians treated you like shit," she said.

Parallax raised an eyebrow.

"Well, he didn't say 'shit,'" said Martha. "He doesn't curse. He said they were 'uncompromising.'"

"That sounds a little more like him," said Parallax, sweeping past her to stare at something she couldn't see.

Martha squinted in Parallax's direction, trying to make out whatever seemed to be holding his attention, but as far as she could tell, there was nothing but sand and wind, and maybe a rare glint of sun.

"Mr. Jordan," she said after a while. He turned to her, a curious expression moving across his face. "I want to go home."

He shook his head. "Not going to be worth it."

* * *

Crime did not cease, nor did natural disasters abate simply because members of the Justice League were blindsided by grief and the apathy that often follows personal tragedy. While the team managed to hold back the handful of inevitable threats to humanity in the weeks that followed Martha's funeral, its responses were disjointed and spiritless. Arsenal knew the lack of heart and focus would eventually lead to another death, either within the League or among the civilian population and in mid-May he asked Meera to call a meeting on the Watchtower.

Superman arrived early at Roy's request. As much as he dreaded bringing it up, there was a sensitive matter to be discussed and it could no longer be put off. As Roy haltingly threw out the suggestion, Superman stared blindly through the conference room porthole, blinking hard several times and finally nodding jerkily in agreement.

"You don't have to stay for the meeting," Roy told him afterwards.

"Yes, I do," Superman said gruffly. "We've got to get ourselves together. That means we've all got to be here."

Arsenal nodded, relieved. Superman's presence would do more to help their teammates move on than anything Roy could possibly say.

Midori had not been able to salvage the _Javelin-11_. She was supervising the construction of a new shuttle; it was a few weeks away from being ready. Gren had meanwhile offered to transport his teammates to the Watchtower. A few minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start, an airlock hissed near the rear of the station and Lian shambled into the conference room. She gave Superman a long, silent hug and slipped into her usual seat. Soon everyone had taken his or her place at the table. Only two chairs remained vacant. Everybody tried not to look at them.

Arsenal leaned forward in his seat at the head of the table. "Thank you for coming," he said, his voice subdued. "We have a lot of things to talk about. First –"

"Wait a minute," Grendel said, glowering at Batman's empty chair. "We're not all here."

"We are for now," said Arsenal without elaborating.

Anger flared in Gren's hazel eyes. Meera glanced at him, then looked away.

"First, I'd like to thank Wonder Woman, who has very graciously agreed to fill in for a while, until we –" Roy took a deep breath as Diana smiled sadly at him. "We're going to have to do some recruiting at some point. I know none of us are quite up for it yet."

No one argued with him. Superman, sitting a few chairs away from Wonder Woman, cleared his throat and quietly thanked the former Themysciran princess, who reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

Arsenal asked Midori to update the group on the shuttle. The _Javelin-12_ would be twice as fast as its previous incarnation and have new features adapted from Coluan and other extra-terrestrial spacecraft models, she said. They included a propulsion system derived purely from solar energy and the technology to make limited deep-space voyages.

Roy kept his actual pep talk brief: Martha would have wanted the League to move on, to honor her memory by carrying on its enduring mission with determination and resilience. Lian and Gren were putting together a memorial they hoped to hold at Barringer Crater within the next month. Meanwhile, the team couldn't afford to allow its grief to compromise the lives of those they had sworn to protect.

"Arsenal's right," said Superman, his eyes riveted to the tabletop. "We have a job to do. And… um… my wife and I thank all of you for everything you've done for us and all of the kind thoughts you've expressed, but the best tribute you could offer Martha is to remember that she always fought her heart out and that she'd want you to do the same."

Lian shielded her eyes with a hand and struggled to suppress a sniff. The rest of her teammates bowed their heads as if someone had suggested a moment of silence.

"We've got to keep fighting," Roy agreed softly. "And I need to bring up another issue that's somewhat related to that." His eyes met briefly with Midori's imploring ones and he gave her a crooked smile.

"I think that it might be time," he said, "to consider the possibility of new leadership."

"No," said the Flash instantly, as his shaken teammates goggled at Roy.

"What are you talking about?" asked Lian. She looked as though her father had struck her. "We _need _you."

"More than ever," added Meera.

Roy shook his head. "The record doesn't reflect that," he said stoically. He held up a hand as Lian continued to protest. "A new leader will bring a new outlook, and I think we need that right now." His eyes slid to Gren, who had been studying Roy expressionlessly.

"Wrong," said Gren flatly as he absently twisted his ring. "We need consistency. Stability. In other words, you, Arse."

Remembering the young Green Lantern's brash attempt to depose him two years earlier, Roy said warmly, "I was thinking it might be your time, Gren." He looked around the room. "If everyone agrees. I think they will."

Gren shook his head. "I'm not available."

Leaning forward, Wonder Woman said, "Roy, I agreed to come back to a team led by you. I don't think it's fair to change the terms now."

Midori added, "I want you to stay leader, too. Because giving it up will make you very sad."

"Well, there you go, Arse," said Gren snidely, as Wally snickered and Roy's face turned the color of a pomegranate. "Can't have you sad and all."

Superman rose. "Sounds like a unanimous vote to me," he said to Roy. "I'm going to …" he nodded toward the door.

"OK," said Arsenal meaningfully. Once Superman was gone, he added, "One more thing."

He exhaled apprehensively. "The world knows our team doctor was killed during the fight with Parallax. People are beginning to notice Superwoman hasn't been seen in a while either. We can't let anybody make the connection. Lois and Clay's safety, and probably Clark's sanity, depend on Superman's identity remaining a secret."

He reached into a compartment on his belt and pulled out a hologram projector identical to the one Martha had always worn. "I need volunteers… to be Superwoman."

Long seconds passed before anyone could speak. Finally, Wally asked, "How does her family feel about that?"

"I talked to Clark before the meeting," said Roy. "He agrees it's necessary."

Silence fell over the meeting room, then Gren glared defensively at his teammates.

"Don't laugh," he said, and put up his hand. Nobody did.

* * *

Martha gave the rubbery cactus-like branch a squeeze and held her breath against the stench as clear, thick goo oozed into her open hand. She smeared the plant's putrid sap – which smelled something like a cross between gasoline and rotten oranges – onto the planes of her cheeks and forehead as if it was war paint. In a sense that's what it was: Martha was preparing herself for a battle. She just didn't know when it would occur, or where, or even what form it would take.

As she became more convinced that Parallax planned to return to Earth to finish what he had started – and she still didn't know what that was – she had become more reluctant to leave the spot she considered the entry point to the universe in which she was trapped. Parallax might return at any time and somehow escape through the trans-universal rift, abandoning her on this punishing desert world. As much as that prospect frightened her, Martha's primary worry was now for the Earth and her unsuspecting teammates, who might die trying to defend it.

But the second tenant of her plan – _make yourself strong_ – required her presence up in the thin layer of atmosphere above the planet's grueling sand-filed winds, where she could absorb the sunlight she needed to maintain her powers. On the planet's better days, a diffuse sunlight pushed its way through the constant gritty mist, but over the past week, the days had seemed to be getting darker. If this part of the planet was rotating into a sort of winter, her already waning strength would plummet. She needed to act while she could still fly high enough to absorb a little more sunlight. The sap from the plant, as revolting as it felt and smelled magnified the intensity of the rays, much like baby oil did for the skin of an ordinary sunbather.

Martha angled herself toward the blurry golden star and flung out her sap-coated arms and legs. There was very little left of the mint-green dress she had worn to the Police and Firefighter's Ball, and while she was not cold, she did feel vulnerable. As she hung spread-eagled in the bright, cold sky, she imagined herself soaking in power like a solar sponge and tried not to worry about Parallax.

She could feel the star's power surging through her and hoped the limited time she spent in its glow would be enough. Martha did not think she could afford to sacrifice much more meditation time. The practice was no longer merely a device to keep her focused and calm. The tranquility that had settled through her seemed to intrigue Parallax. Their brief exchanges had become real conversations. He probably didn't think he was giving much away, but Martha had a lot of experience finding answers in other people's questions. It was a technique she used at Arkham with considerable success.

She did agree with Parallax that he was not, at heart, a criminal. While Martha's talent as a psychiatrist came from being able to see the men inside the asylum's monsters, she reserved her sympathy for few of them and only Harvey merited her deepest sympathy. She saw more parallels between the former Two-Face and the man who once called himself Hal Jordan than either of them would have liked. Heartbreaking circumstances, she believed, had made these two extraordinarily good men go bad. Roy had not been wrong to think that Martha might feel sorry for Parallax.

But she had no less compassion for herself and the family and friends she left behind. There was a degree of manipulation in Martha's interactions with Parallax that she suspected went both ways. While he seemed to accept her genuine sympathy for him and respond to it, she had no doubt he planned to desert her once he managed to break through the barrier. As she righted herself and headed back down to what she considered her base camp, Martha recalled with concern that he seemed increasingly cavalier about revealing his intentions. He must be making headway in his efforts to return to Earth.

She remembered his bitter response to her description of the memorial that had been created in his honor after he had been thought to have sacrificed himself in an effort to restart the sun.

"I'd wished I'd died," he said. "After that little episode, I was nothing but protoplasm and pain – and somehow a mind – for years that seemed like eons. It wasn't so long ago that I managed to restore myself to my original form, and believe me, it didn't tickle.

"If it had been worth it…" he started, then shook his head. "But it wasn't. The people of Earth thought I'd died for them, but it wasn't worth more than a few days of half-mast flags and some officially sanctioned expressions of regret. As far as those entitled bastards are concerned, superheroes exist to protect them, and if we die doing it – well, then we get a garden in our honor."

"What did you want?" Martha had asked. "A religion?"

"I hoped they might get better," Parallax replied. "Even a little. But it's worse now than when I left. There are three dozens wars going on right now on your little planet, Dr. Kent. People are still abusing their children, shooting each other over parking spaces and pissing all over their natural resources. Dysfunction is virtually wired into the human genome."

The doctor and the idealist in Martha resisted arguing with Parallax. "And you think it's time for a reboot?"

He had not responded immediately, but, finally, apparently thinking he had nothing to lose, Parallax had answered, "That's right."

In an odd way, Martha had felt relieved. The apparatus Parallax had constructed out of solid light had been a threat to humanity. She had not detonated a harmless device and sent them both here for nothing.

Martha always tried to wipe the sap from her face and limbs before re-entering the lower atmosphere, but she never completely succeeded and by the time she landed, she imagined she looked like the female Clayface Bruce had once described to her.

She was brushing futilely at her gritty shoulders when she saw that Parallax had returned. He was probing thoughtfully at a spot about five feet off of the ground, where she'd supposed they'd fallen into this barren world. Martha had seen him do this before; it had seemed a futile exercise. This time, though, when he pushed against the patch of air, a fist-sized burst of light appeared around Parallax's hand. Martha felt as if her lungs were suddenly filled with ice.

As quietly as she landed, he had managed to hear her. He turned and surveyed her sandy form with grim amusement.

"I know your dress is falling apart," he said. "But the sand's not much of a fashion statement."

Martha stepped forward. "Why not Coast City?" she blurted.

The pupils of Parallax's brown eyes turned green.

"Why Barringer Crater?" Martha continued, struggling against a rising surge of fear.

Mentioning the beloved city he had failed to protect might provoke Parallax into killing her. He could do it effortlessly enough and then there'd be no one to stop him when he forced his way back through the rift. But it looked to Martha as if he had managed to open the portal between this universe and Earth and she was desperate to distract him. She could not allow him to break through without her.

"Well, Dr. Kent," Parallax whispered. "They're rebuilding Coast City, you know. They just laid the foundation for a shopping mall. I wouldn't want to mess that up."

And that was it, Martha realized. Whatever else he said about the descent of humanity, Hal Jordan had come home to avenge the perceived desecration of Coast City.

"Laying the foundation… over a mass grave," she said.

"That's right," said Parallax, his eyes boring into hers.

Despite herself, Martha felt pity replacing her fear.

"It wasn't your fault," she said. "It was never your fault."

Parallax seemed unmoved.

"No," he said. "The fault lies in Barringer Crater."

* * *

Bruce had just pounded through his seventh mile when Lian walked through the door of the mansion's small state-of-the-art gym and stood uncertainly in front of his treadmill.

"Hi," she said nervously, as he slapped the stop button and the belt rolled to a halt. He stared at her, panting, and pushed a lock of sweat-drenched hair from his eyes.

"I've never seen you sweat before," she offered, when Bruce failed to return her greeting. He didn't answer. He hadn't seen Lian since the funeral, almost a month ago, although Roy had visited him several times. The sight of Martha's best friend sent an unexpected ache through Bruce, a stronger one than he might have anticipated had it occurred to him to think about Lian at all.

She wore jeans and a pink t-shirt – conservative attire for her – and her auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail. Bruce reached for a small towel he'd draped over the rail of the treadmill and wiped his face, waiting for Lian to say whatever she'd come to say.

"Why are you up here instead of down there?" she asked, nodding toward the Batcave.

"I'm not ready for down there," Bruce said.

She offered him a half-hearted smile. "Maybe soon."

His eyes flicked toward the worn black treadmill belt, then back to her, clearly waiting for her to explain what she was doing in his gym.

"OK, I won't take long," she said. "I'm just –" She sighed. "I had to make a list of people I've kind of harmed and, you know, offer to make amends to them and, well, you're on my list, so – here I am."

Slowly, he said, "I don't remember you being an alcoholic."

Lian gave him a mirthless smile. "I'm sure you know what kind of addict I am."

"I didn't know they had 12-step programs for that," Bruce said.

"They have 12-step programs for everything," replied Lian, adding quickly. "I'm sorry I came on to you when I was married to Tim."

During their brief and disastrous marriage, Lian had cheated on Tim with regularity and very little discretion. Her clumsy attempt to seduce Bruce during that time had landed her dumped on her derriere on the front drive of Wayne Manor. Not all of Tim's friends had been quite so loyal.

Bruce supposed the apology had been hard for her, but he couldn't keep the coldness from his voice. "The person you should be apologizing to is Tim."

"I know," she replied. "And I have. Sort of. He wouldn't talk to me. So I sent him an apology video. But I don't think he watched it. So I sent him a text message. Which I hope he read."

He nodded, which unfortunately Lian mistook as encouragement to continue the conversation.

"So – celibacy," she said. "I kind of hate it."

Bruce considered telling her she'd get used to it, when he found himself staring at the Cyrillic lettering on the front of her t-shirt.

"Of course, I might feel like less of a sex object if you'd stop gawking at my chest," Lian said petulantly.

"I got her that shirt a few months ago," Bruce said dimly. "When I went to Moscow on business."

Stricken, Lian folded her arms across the front of her blouse as if hiding the design would make it seem less like Martha's.

"I'm so sorry," she said despondently. "I didn't –"

"It's OK," he said, looking away.

Lian's voice trembled. "Lois told me to take any of Martha's clothes that I wanted and to give the rest to Goodwill," she said. "Most of her stuff was too small for me, but this –"

"They only had mediums," Bruce remembered. The vendor in Saint Petersburg Square had apologized, but promised that the lady would like the shirt anyway.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"When was Lois in town?" Bruce asked.

"Last week," Lian replied. "She – didn't come here?"

"No," said Bruce.

He could not blame Lois for avoiding him, but he was in her debt and he was not quite sure how to thank her. The morning after Bruce came home from the hospital she had called Alfred and asked the old man if there were paparazzi lurking outside of the mansion. Alfred replied that there were three of them and in a clipped voice Lois told him to hang on; she was putting him on hold. They never learned who she called, but five minutes later, the trio of tabloid photographers had vanished. Lois had not wanted to speak with Bruce personally, but after asking Alfred a few pointed questions, she did ask him to pass along a message.

"Ms. Lane says you are to stop torturing yourself," the elderly butler informed him.

Lois's compassion – and Clark's for that matter – in the face of what Bruce knew to be their considerable hurt and anger towards him had been hard for him to fathom. Less than two weeks after burying Martha, they had suffered though the nightmare of seeing their dead daughter's name entangled with Bruce's in gossip columns speculating on the nature of his 'suicide attempt.'

As for the paparazzi, Lois could not have known the tabloid press was stalking Wayne Manor unless they were staking out the Kents' condominium and possibly the Daily Planet as well. How they could show him any kindness after what he'd inadvertently put them through was beyond Bruce, and yet Clark had spend hours stopping the police investigation against Alfred, and Lois, in addition to whatever high-powered phone calls she had made to call off the dirt diggers, had made it clear she believed that Bruce had been punished enough.

It should probably not have surprised him. Martha's kindheartedness had not sprung from a vacuum. Bruce had always known her parents were good people; he had often considered Clark to be too good. The Kents' ability to see past their own pain and resentment caused Bruce to realize, far too late, that as upset as it might have made them, her parents would not have disowned Martha for being involved with him.

"I'd better get going," Lian said uncomfortably, and Bruce realized he had left her in alone in his gym while he meandered through his own troubled thoughts.

"Thanks for dropping by," he said automatically.

Knowing he didn't mean it, Lian gave him a jaundiced look and let herself out.

* * *

Emma led Gren to the lush backyard of the suburban Montreal home she shared with Meera and asked if she could bring him a glass of water.

"Unless you have a beer," Gren joked, knowing that she didn't.

He found Meera meditating in a chaise lounge on the back porch. She opened her eyes and smiled at him.

"How's it going?" he asked.

She nodded. "I'm feeling a little more under control," she said. She hesitated. "Mind if I try something?"

Gren sat in a chair across from her. "Go ahead."

"It may be painful," Meera warned. "I'm going to take away all of your sadness. But then I'm going to put it back."

"You have to put it back?" Gren asked uneasily.

"I can't go around taking away everyone's pain," Meera said regretfully.

"But I'm your friend," Gren said.

She smiled sadly. "That's why I have to return it to you. The suffering you've endured is part of what makes you who you are."

"I wouldn't mind being someone else," Gren countered.

Meera reached for his hand. "I would miss my friend."

* * *

Arkham's new director, Lawrence Adrienne, was as mindful as his predecessor that Bruce Wayne's money went a long way toward closing the gap left by a dearth of government funding. Still, he was annoyed to see that the billionaire apparently had the run of his institution and was using it to visit one of the asylum's most notorious inmates. Adrienne threatened to fire the psychiatrist and the guard who allowed Wayne an unsupervised meeting with Harvey Dent and he meant it, even though they were already a doctor short, with Dev Persky's Justice League pet now worm food somewhere in Arizona.

When Wayne arrived unannounced to see Two-Face a second time, Adrienne personally escorted him to a small room used by staff to interview the asylum's more volatile inmates. Of course Bruce could see Harvey if he really felt it was necessary, the director said affably. But for Bruce's own safety, Adrienne wanted a thick shield of Plexiglas between them.

Wayne had responded with a wan grin. "Not sure I've mentioned Arkham in my will?"

That had precisely been Adrienne's concern. But he said, "I would just hate to see someone who's been so generous come to any harm on my watch."

"He's such a dick," muttered Harvey darkly, as he and Bruce watched Adrienne leave the small room.

Bruce silently agreed. He leaned toward the glass. "How are you doing?"

Harvey traced the scars on his left hand with an index finger. "I think you miss someone more if they were the only person you really talked to."

"I know what you mean," Bruce said. He was not sure his visits were strictly for Harvey's sake.

"Are you angry?" Harvey asked cautiously.

Bruce considered this. "I think that's one of the stages of grief." Alfred had left an article about loss on the kitchen table, but Bruce had not finished reading it.

"I meant at her," Harvey said.

Puzzled, Bruce asked, "At Martha?"

"She promised she would be more careful," Harvey said and Bruce could hear a slight edge in his voice. "What kind of superheroes drag a civilian doctor into a battle with the most dangerous man in the universe?"

Bruce did not know how to answer him.

"So… you're not angry?" Harvey asked.

Bruce shrugged. "I'm angry at myself," he answered. "For a lot of reasons. But I'm trying to learn how to forgive myself."

"That sounds very Martha," said Harvey gently. When Bruce didn't respond, he added, "Her mother came to visit me last week. She was very kind."

It seemed like Lois had been everywhere in Gotham City except Wayne Manor. Bruce cleared his throat.

"Do you need anything?" he asked Harvey.

The inmate smiled bitterly. "I'm not allowed to have anything."

Bruce stood up and leaned against the back of the scarred wooden chair Adrienne had provided him. "OK if I stop by again?"

The rancor left Harvey's smile. "As long as it doesn't interfere with my busy social schedule."

* * *

Despite Roy's entreaty that she take it easier, Midori went nights without sleep to make sure the _Javelin-12_ would be ready for the memorial service at Barringer Crater. Although they had toyed with the idea of holding the service on Memorial Day, Lian and Gren ultimately decided that they would have to put it off until June 1 in order to avoid clashing with a Boy Scout jamboree that had been scheduled for the crater for more than a year.

Arsenal asked everyone to gather at the upstate New York headquarters so they could ride out to Barringer together. Shortly before they were scheduled to take off, Superman sent a message through Meera about having to answer a last-minute call for help and said that he would meet them at the crater. Roy only half-believed Clark's story about the distress call. He suspected that the Man of Steel might want to make the trip alone.

Most of the team arrived early enough to express awe at the new shuttle's sleek beauty. Midori was enthusiastically explaining that the new design would reduce wind resistance to almost nothing when she looked past the teammates crowded around her and her face grew solemn.

"You have room for one more?" Batman asked.

Startled faces turned toward him. The Flash exchanged glances with Wonder Woman, who aimed a tentative smile at her old friend.

As Midori explained that the shuttle could actually hold a dozen passengers, Lian rushed toward Batman, clearly intending to hug him.

He stepped back. "I still don't do that."

Roy gave him a brief grin.

"We're glad you're here," he said, unaware that Gren, standing behind him, was sending Batman a different message. He didn't say anything, but the unguarded anger stretching across the Green Lantern's face made it clear that Arsenal's assertion was not unanimous.

"Well, let's go," said Lian. "I don't want to be late."

* * *

Martha hoped the power she'd managed to store would be enough; she could no longer afford to leave her desolate campsite. As long as she was awake and alone, she sat in meditation, trying to match her stores of physical power with emotional and spiritual strength.

Parallax was now spending hours at the spot where he had managed to produce the small rift between the universes. He had been able to re-create the breach, but he could not seem to enlarge it. He didn't express his frustration, but Martha could feel it radiating from him. This made questioning him riskier, but she hoped it might also leave him less cautious. She did not feel, at this point, that she had much choice.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, with a calmness born of countless hours of meditation.

"It's more like what I'm going to undo," Parallax replied, without taking his eyes from the fist-sized rift. He stepped forward and managed to shove his entire arm through the fissure.

But he could go no further. He withdrew from the breech and gave Martha a calculating look.

"You try it," he said.

Martha shook her head. She had attempted to locate the rift in Parallax's absence. It seemed that his powers, the same ones he had once used to manipulate time, were the key to the small universal door.

Impatiently, Parallax seized her hand and shoved it with his own through the opening. A burst of warmth lit through Martha as she felt what she was sure was the heat of her own sun. Along with the quick caress of sunlight came a sudden understanding. She snatched back her hand and stepped away.

She glanced at Parallax, who was contemplating her ominously. He had told her that he had once been a test pilot; Martha wondered if he had ever taken a physics class. When it came down to it, the solution was almost ridiculously easy. There was only one problem and it seemed insurmountable.

If she went back. Parallax would have to go with her. There was no escaping that – she did not believe either of them could make it through the trans-universal rift without the other. They had gone through the breach together when Parallax had attempted to break away from the explosion and Martha had clung tenaciously to his shoulders. According to the physical principle of equal exchange, they would have to return the same way: together.

Martha felt the tranquility born of weeks of meditation give way to overwhelming sadness. She could not go back. Parallax could not be allowed to return to Earth and in order to keep him here, she would have to stay as well. For the first time since she'd first picked herself up from the ground of the hellish wasteland, Martha fought the urge to cry. She thought of her friends and family and her mind rested on the man she had started to believe might become both to her. She would never see Bruce again and they had left so much unresolved. Sand clung immediately to the twin paths of tears that ran down her cheeks.

"What's wrong with you?" Parallax asked impatiently. When she didn't answer, he turned back to the rift and shut his eyes. A fragile aura of green light enveloped him and he again pushed against the invisible spot in the air.

This time he managed to get a shoulder through, as well as an arm. Martha realized her theory about equal exchange did not apply to a being like Parallax. There was something about his powers that defied the laws of physics. Eventually, he would be able to get through the rift alone, while her only possibility of escape lay in managing to pass through with him.

So either the both of them returned to Earth together, or Parallax went back alone, with no initial line of defense to interfere with his plan to avenge the ghosts of Coast City. Although she felt some relief that she might still be able to go home, Martha saw that the time for strategizing had run out.

The glow around Parallax was deepening now. He looked from the invisible rift to Martha and offered her the faintest smirk.

"See you," he said, and turned back toward the breach, pushing against it until his entire left side had disappeared.

And that fast, her time was up. In much the same way she had driven the explosive green device against Parallax so many weeks before, Martha hurtled herself at him now. As her body smashed into his, he started to struggle, to throw her off before the momentum of her blow forced them both from the bleak wasteland to a burst of blue sky. He managed to wrestle away from her, but as she slammed into a ground made not from sand, but brown earth, Martha knew that he had been too late: She was lying in the dusty mouth of Barringer Crater.

"I'm sorry you did that," said Parallax calmly. She raised her head to see him hovering above her. "Now you're going to die with everyone else."

Martha pushed herself up onto her hands, then rolled away as she dodged a blast of green light.

"Meera," she said urgently, as she scrambled to her feet. "Do you hear me?"

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Homecomings_

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**

* * *

**Super-thanks to beta reader arg914 and technical advisor The Five Foot Ninja.

* * *

The _Javelin-12 _was hurtling over west Texas when Meera gasped loudly enough for Arsenal and Wonder Woman to interrupt their subdued conversation and look at her curiously. Before either of them could ask if she was all right, the telepath's face grew almost frenzied and she started clawing her way out of her seat restraints.

"Get back in your seat!" Gren yelled as Meera nearly toppled onto Wonder Woman, who was sitting directly across from her. Diana grabbed the younger woman by her elbows and tried to settle her back in her seat, but Meera began struggling as she blurted a series of disjointed words that no one in the cabin could follow.

"You're... How can you…?" she babbled. "How… oh, I'm so sorry…."

"Meera, what's wrong?" asked Roy, wondering if the sorrow and stress of the last six weeks had overwhelmed yet another member of his team.

"They're back in the crater," she gasped, "They're not… they're _back_."

"Who?" he asked, as Batman, who had been sitting alone in the rear of the shuttle, stared at Meera with a look of stunned comprehension.

"Martha…. Parallax," Meera sobbed.

Gren tore off his own restraints and shot to his feet. "I thought they were fuckin' dead!"

Meera's face grew distant for a moment, as if she was listening to someone miles away, and then her eyes became sharp and lucid.

"She will be," she said. "If we don't hurry."

* * *

Despite his threat and the fact that his intentions appeared to include mass murder, Martha didn't think Parallax seemed eager to kill her. The emerald projectile he'd fired at her when they landed was narrow and ill-timed; the second blast of solid light hit her just as she became airborne. It was strong enough to knock Martha shoulder-first into the ground, but lacked the force she might have expected from a man who once overpowered her father.

She did not delude herself into thinking his halfhearted resistance meant she could stop him alone. Meera had responded to her distress call in seconds – to Martha's surprise, the League seemed to be headed toward the crater – but the telepath could not seem to focus on the looming danger inherent in Parallax's return to Earth, a reality that, at present, overshadowed Martha's own homecoming.

_We can talk about how alive I am later_, Martha told her impatiently. _Listen to me._

She had prepared for this moment; she'd had weeks to work out what had to be done. It did not matter that what had seemed like a workable strategy when she conceived it in the middle of an endless and unforgiving sandstorm now seemed whimsical and more than a little flaky. Conventional tactics had failed to finish Parallax. There was little to lose in taking a less straightforward approach.

Martha relayed her plan to Meera as Parallax absently bombarded her with a barrage of tiny green comets. He was plainly scanning the crater, looking, Martha assumed, for the fault he'd alluded to when they were trapped together on the hostile desert world.

She swooped after him, adrenaline mixing with a surge of vitality borne from the union of her body with pure Terran sunlight. Parallax spun toward her from halfway across the crater, hitting Martha with an explosion of energy that sent her careening into the crater wall a mile and a half away. As she pried herself from the depression her body had made when it slammed into the stone, she noted grimly that Parallax had stopped holding back.

* * *

"We have to get to the crater now," Meera told Gren breathlessly, as her disbelieving teammates stared at her. "And on the way, you have to call the Green Lantern Corps."

Gren gave her a dazed nod, grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her toward the airlock. Wonder Woman was waiting for them. She palmed a button next to the hatch.

"I'm going with you," she said as it hissed open.

Meera asked Roy, "Should I call Superman?"

"No," said Wonder Woman adamantly, as Arsenal shook his head.

"Not until we're sure it's really her," he said.

Meera nodded. "When you get to there, do everything you can to distract Parallax. Martha has a plan."

Parallax was on the other side of the crater by the time Martha had pitched herself into the air again. Her left elbow ached where it had slammed into the rock wall and a jolt of pain shot through her neck as she tracked his movements. During the time it had taken her to right herself, he seemed to have found what he was looking for: he was headed for a spot in the northwest crater wall.

He was preoccupied enough not to notice the three airborne forms as they hovered over the chasm for a moment, and then darted furtively toward Martha. It was not until she could actually see their faces – suffused with joy despite the urgency of the situation – that Parallax spun around and hit Wonder Woman with a blast that sent her sailing into the two-story observatory and souvenir shop that had been erected a decade before.

Martha soared toward Gren and Meera, who had plummeted a dozen feet to dodge Parallax's salvo of jade missiles. As he angled his body so he was holding Meera behind him, Gren answered with a hail of exploding green light that lit up the three-mile basin.

"I'll take Meera," Martha shouted, reaching for the telepath. "_Distract Parallax._ Knock him off course and keep him busy."

Gren blinked at her in astonishment.

"Gren," Martha begged, as she wrapped an arm around Meera's waist and felt her teammate's nails dig into her lower back. "_Please_."

He snapped out of his stupor and headed after Parallax, stopping, suddenly, to spin back toward Martha. She was about to urge him forward, when he reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and flung something at her. Martha caught it with her free hand: Her hologram projector.

Wonder Woman, meanwhile, had extracted herself from the ruins of the observatory and was barreling toward Parallax, a look of outrage distorting her ordinarily placid face. She quickly outpaced Gren and, stretching both arms in front of her, plowed fists first into Parallax, knocking him mere feet from where he'd been hovering in the sky, but still managing to disorient him.

Still in mid-air, Martha seized Meera by both arms.

"You ready for this?" she asked.

Meera looked terrified. "I don't think I… he's too strong."

Martha's brown eyes locked onto Meera's. "You're stronger."

Meera reached out to the friend she had thought lost forever. "We are," she said, touching Martha's cheek.

Nodding, Martha flicked on the hologram. Gren and Wonder Woman, she saw, had ensnared Parallax in a brutal battle that had done him very little harm, but had already bloodied his resolute attackers. They would die, and quickly, Superwoman knew, if this flaky plan of hers didn't work.

* * *

Batman shouldered Arsenal out of his way and gripped the bulkhead above the cockpit windshield. He shut out Roy's demands that he return to his seat and stared straight through the glass. The crater was now in sight, but they were still too far away to see anything, at least with the naked eye. Without looking away from her instrumentation, Midori keyed in a few numbers on a panel near her right hand and the enormous monitor she'd build into the shuttle wall zoomed into the enormous basin.

"There she is," whispered Quiver, smearing away tears with the back of one hand while grasping the top of her bow in the other. Batman stepped back to examine the screen as Midori programmed in a course correction that nearly sent him flying across the small craft.

Roy grabbed Batman where his cape met his collar and thrust him into the couch Wonder Woman had abandoned. "Strap. In," he said through gritted teeth. Riveted by the caped blonde flyer on the screen, Batman complied without any real awareness of what he was doing.

"I see them," Midori called out, and Arsenal, now the only one standing, leaned over her shoulder to peer through the cockpit.

"Come up behind Parallax," he said, belting himself into the chair behind her as Midori swung the shuttle around the north side of the basin.

Midori looked back at him from the pilot's seat. "What are we going to do?" Roy put a hand on her shoulder.

"I hate to tell you," he said.

* * *

Parallax flung a lightning bolt shaped blast of energy into Wonder Woman's chest and twisted toward Gren in time to slip out of the grasp of the young Lantern's enormous green hand.

"You're Guy's son?" Parallax taunted him. "You've got twice the balls."

Gren flicked his eyes toward Wonder Woman, who lay on the crater floor, sucking down wracking mouthfuls of air. He glared at Parallax. Gren had a catalog of grudges against his father, but he had no doubt Guy would have fought ferociously against his former comrade. Guy would also have mouthed off to Parallax throughout the battle, draining away the focus he needed to defeat such a powerful opponent. Gren wouldn't make that mistake. He glanced past Parallax into the sun and spotted a growing silver glimmer. He shifted his gaze a few degrees to the left and saw Superwoman and Meera coming up out of the distance.

Gren raised his ringed fist toward Parallax as though he was aiming a gun and summoned all of his willpower for a final strike. But just as he was about to let loose with everything he had, an emerald explosion sent him painfully into darkness.

* * *

Superwoman watched helplessly as Gren plunged towards the floor of the crater. She did not know if he could survive the fall; his ring did him no good if he was unconscious. A true warrior would have let him fall. To break into Parallax's line of vision and save her friend would risk the mission – and the world. But Superwoman had never considered herself a soldier. She thought of Gren's radiant face when he saw her alive and, tightening her grip around Meera's waist, she rocketed toward his tumbling form.

_I'm trying to distract Parallax, _Meera told her, as Superwoman strained to reach their teammate. He was meters from the ground. A blast of green light whizzed past them. Meera squeezed her eyes together and suddenly the canyon was quiet.

Superwoman seized Gren by the ankle and eased him to the crater floor. Parallax no longer seemed to see them, but this respite gave her no relief: In the seconds it had taken her to save her friend, the renegade Green Lantern had reproduced the pulsing green spherical mechanism Martha had sacrificed so much to destroy.

"What's he going to do with that thing?" Martha shouted to Meera as the telepath shuddered and Parallax turned back to them, livid now.

_His mind…I've never felt anything like it. Martha, he's too strong. I can't_… Meera tensed. _Oh my God_.

Martha inhaled deeply and reached deeply inside herself for the peace of mind she'd cultivated during her weeks on the desert planet. "That's OK," she said calmly. "You're not going to fight him."

Suddenly she realized it no longer mattered what Parallax was planning to do with the emerald machine. She could not afford to think about it now; it would not alter her plan. Clutching Meera, she hurtled toward Parallax, weaving around angry volleys of solid light in a last effort to end the madness that had started years before she was born, when Hal Jordan lost himself in the smoking ruins of Coast City.

"Enough!" Parallax shouted and as an emerald halo enveloped him, Martha could see that he truly intended for his next strike to end her life. It might have killed her and Meera, too, had the telepath not managed one last effort to distract him, just as Wonder Woman hit him from one side and the _Javelin-12_ plowed into him from behind.

Despite his vast power, the combined attacks managed to stagger Parallax. He was not hurt badly, but he was shaken enough to momentarily drop his defenses. As disoriented as he was, he still seemed angry.

In the bare seconds that his defenses were down, Martha sidled up to Parallax, shifting so Meera was nearly touching him.

_You can do it_, Martha assured her. _He wants you to._

Meera laid her soft brown hand against Parallax's temple and though he tried to jerk away, he did not seem to be able to move.

"Mr. Jordan," Meera whispered as his eyes became distant. "I'm going to take your pain away."

This news did not seem to please Parallax; his face contorted in furious resistance and his pupils shimmered green. But as Meera gently touched her other hand to his chest, the angry light faded from his eyes and it again seemed like he was fixed on something very far away.

He had a lot of pain; it had become virtually all he was over the past decades: Hurt and guilt and anger. As it drained away, Martha watched his body slump and realized that she was now supporting him.

With no free hand to reach out, she leaned forward until her forehead was touching Meera's temple. "Give him this," she whispered, and closed her eyes.

Meera pulled away with a startled, reluctant look. Then she gave her friend a grave nod and infused the serenity Martha had accumulated from endless hours of meditation into the tortured soul of Hal Jordan.

"What the fuck?" Suddenly Gren, bloody and disheveled, was hovering beside them. Martha looked down and saw that Wonder Woman had rescued the damaged shuttle and was helping her teammates disembark.

"It's OK," she said steadily as Jordan's eyelids fluttered spasmodically and his chin collapsed onto his chest. She nodded toward the ground and Gren followed her to the crater floor. As they touched down upon the brown earth, The Corps' leader, Kurdoon and eleven other Green Lanterns landed around them in a shower of green and black.

"This is not an arrest," Superwoman told Kurdoon firmly as Jordon sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands. "It's a rescue mission."

"You've taken his power?" the gelatinous triped asked in an unnervingly high voice.

Superwoman shook her head. "I'm not sure anyone could do that without killing him," she said. "It's a part of who he is. But I don't think he's Parallax anymore. And I know he needs your help."

Kurdoon's head twitched uncertainly on a short, bulbous neck. Superwoman thought it might be his version of a nod. With a flick of a long purplish limb, he conjured what looked like an ornate sleigh. Two of the Lanterns nervously helped an unsteady Jordan onto it.

"I hope you're correct," Kurdoon told Superwoman.

Martha flicked off her hologram. "You tell the Guardians that they'd better treat him right this time," she said, and stepped toward the emerald sleigh.

Jordan was conscious, but too weak to lift his head from the seat's cushioned green headrest. His exhausted face was filled with gratitude and remorse.

"Everything I've done," he said. "I can't make up for it."

"Get better first. And then worry about that," Martha told him.

Kurdoon's head shuddered again and the contingent of Lanterns lifted off.

"And she saves us again," said Martha, turning to smile at Meera.

Suddenly, it was if Martha was once more under attack; Meera lunged at her, hugging her and sobbing. Gren seized both women and swung them around in the air. He gave Martha a hard, quick kiss that she barely seemed to register as she gazed past him, searching for Batman as her teammates raced toward them from the battered shuttle.

"You're alive!" Lian screamed, seizing Martha as Roy pulled Meera to one side. "Oh, my God, Martha, look at your hair!"

Laughing, Martha said, "I've definitely made it back to the right universe. How long have I been gone?"

"Six weeks," said the Flash. Tears curved around the line of his jaw.

"A long six weeks," said Roy, planting a kiss on Martha's cheek, then deciding this wasn't enough, hugging her so hard her feet left the ground. As he set her down, the implications of her long absence struck her and, with a troubled face, she started craning her head around her exultant teammates. She was sure she had seen Batman running toward her with the others but he seemed to have disappeared.

"Meera's called your dad," Roy told her. "He's seconds away."

"We have a lot to catch you up on," said Lian, vainly attempting to brush some of the sand out of Martha's hair.

"Roy and I are having sex now," Midori added helpfully, apparently believing this was one of the things Martha needed to know in order to fully re-adjust to her life on Earth.

"Well, um, that's a good thing, I guess," said Martha, trying not to laugh.

"It _is_ a good thing," Midori informed her. "His skill is immeasurable." Roy covered his reddening face with a hand.

"And guess who's_ not_ having sex?" Lian asked brightly.

"It's a world gone mad," said Martha. Her smile vanished and she took Lian's arm. "Where's –"

And then, in a burst of blue and red, she was enveloped in her father's powerful arms. He was crying even before he reached her.

"Dad," whispered Martha as Superman sobbed into her shoulder. She laid a hand on his heaving back. "Dad, I'm so sorry to have put you through…"

He lifted his head and took her face in his hands, his tears running trickling into his rapturous smile. "I thought I'd never see you again," he said brokenly. "We missed you… Martha… we missed you so much."

Then she was crying, too. "Are Mom and Clay OK?"

"Why don't you go home and see?" Martha looked up at Roy, whose eyes were also glittering. He and the others had stepped back to allow father and daughter their reunion.

Superman took Martha's arm. "Let's go home," he said. He turned to Meera. "Can you get in touch with my wife?" Meera, smiling blissfully, nodded.

Martha took a final, puzzled sweep past her friends and around the crater, then looked up at her father.

"OK," she said. Clark was still holding her arm when they lifted off together. He didn't let go until they had reached Metropolis.

* * *

As his thrilled colleagues chattered happily about the return of their beloved teammate, Roy squinted at the crumpled nose of the smoldering shuttle. Midori moved next to him.

"I don't think I can save it," she said mournfully.

Roy gave her hand a squeeze. "That's OK," he said. "Thirteen's my lucky number." He frowned at the _Jav_ again, then said, "Tell everyone to stay here."

* * *

He found Batman leaning against the far side of the smoking shuttle.

"What the hell?" Roy asked.

Against the blackness of his mask, Batman's bloodless face seemed almost white.

"Is it really... is it her?" he asked, his eyes trained on the crater wall just above the patch of woods where he'd spent tortured days searching for Martha.

_So that was it_. Roy moved next to Batman and rested his back against the _Jav_'s still-warm fuselage.

"Meera's sure it is," he said.

"Meera was sure she was dead," Batman said bitterly.

"Thank God she isn't," Roy said, adding, "Clark took her home."

Batman shut his eyes and let his head drop back against the ruined craft.

* * *

The scent of pizza wafting through the bathroom door made Martha's heart hammer. Six weeks of eating nothing but the acrid fruit of those horrible trees had her ravenous. She rubbed her hand against her wet scalp and noticed with dissatisfaction that despite a scalding twenty-minute shower and four shampoos, there was still sand in her hair. She'd have to wash it again – but after dinner.

"You've lost so much weight," Lois said, hugging Martha as she stepped across the bathroom threshold. Clay, who had been lurking in the hallway alongside his mother, wrapped an arm around his sister from behind and pulled her against his chest.

"Well, I'm wearing your clothes," Martha pointed out, reaching back to tickle Clay. Lois was right. She was only a few inches shorter than her mother, but Martha was drowning in the sweatpants and t-shirt she had borrowed from her. "But believe me, I'll be eating one of those pizzas all by myself."

"Well, hurry up, then." Clark called happily from the other end of the hallway. "They're getting cold."

As her family started to settle around the dining room table, Martha touched her chair and stepped back. "I just have to make this phone call," she said uneasily. It was the fourth call she'd attempted since Clark had brought her back to the apartment. He and Lois exchanged a disturbed look.

Martha could not understand it; even if no one was home at Wayne Manor – and in two years, Alfred had not once failed to pick up the phone – she was sure they had an answering machine. But again, the phone rang endlessly. Dread began to creep along Martha's throat. Had something happened to Alfred?

"We're going to have to tell her," murmured Lois. Clark nodded.

"Tell her what?" Clay asked, coating the top of a slice of pizza with crushed red peppers.

Martha looked up sharply as she set down the phone.

"Tell me what?" she asked. Clark glanced at the dinner table, then reluctantly motioned for her to join him in the darkening rooftop garden.

* * *

"What's going on?" Clay asked as Martha followed her father out into the garden. Lois squeezed his shoulder and murmured, "I'll tell you later."

On the other side of the sliding glass door that separated the living room from the garden, Clark, looking as uncomfortable as she had ever seen him, started to tell their daughter about Bruce's overdose. Lois knew he would present it as an accident; she personally disagreed with this interpretation. She no longer believed Bruce had seduced Martha as an expression of contempt for her father. Rather, Lois thought that the aging vigilante had somehow developed a mid-life infatuation with her vivacious daughter and that Martha's death, after a lifetime of violent losses, had been the one he couldn't take. Clark would not listen to this argument and Lois was not sorry he was presenting Martha with the gentler version. Martha's feelings for Bruce Wayne were now quite obvious and the account of his near death, no matter how sanitized, would go down badly. Lois didn't expect to see her daughter standing on their rooftop much longer.

As Lois watched through the glass, Martha's fingers flew to her mouth and her eyes spilled over with horrified tears. She immediately attempted to fling herself into the sky, but Clark grabbed her wrist and pulled her back, speaking even more quickly now, the urgency of his words mirrored in his earnest face.

Before Lois could make her way into the garden to comfort her daughter and to join Clark's entreaty that she stay with them in Metropolis, Martha shook her head and stepped away from her father, bolting from the rooftop even as Clark continued urge her to reconsider.

Lois slid back the door and stepped into the garden. "You let her go."

"What else could I do?" Clark asked. "Overpower her and force her to stay? She'll – she'll be back soon."

"No, she won't," said Lois. "You know what's going to happen, Clark."

He shook his head, and she knew he was clinging to something Roy had told him a few days after the overdose. "Bruce said he believed a relationship with Martha would be wrong."

"Maybe he doesn't anymore," Lois said, wondering if she still did.

Clark took off his glasses and stared into a horizon towards Gotham City.

"Then why isn't he answering the phone?" he asked.

* * *

Alfred was stirring a pot full of homemade tomato sauce when Bruce pushed into the kitchen so forcefully that the swinging door slammed into the wall behind it. Alfred took a look at the younger man's ghostlike face and asked, "What has happened?"

"She's alive," Bruce said, his voice quaking.

The wooden ladle Alfred had been holding sank to the bottom of the large pot. "How can this be?" Tears glittered in his wonderstruck eyes.

Bruce shook his head. "She's going to come here." He looked anxiously at the old man. "And I can't –" He held up his hand as Alfred took a few confused steps toward him.

"Please… tell her," He struggled for the right words. "Tell her… this is the happiest day of my life… that she's alive… but I can't see her right now."

The old man stared. "But, surely –"

"_Please_, Alfred," Bruce said desperately, and although the elderly butler did not understand the younger man's plea, he could sense the depths of his agitation.

"Very well," he said, still trying to process the glorious news and Bruce's mystifying reaction to it.

Bruce nodded gratefully and disappeared from the kitchen.

Martha had already called three times by the time Bruce burst into his kitchen and urged Alfred to keep her away, but the elderly butler had been outside picking tomatoes from the small vegetable patch he kept just outside of the kitchen. There was an answering machine in Bruce's office, but Alfred had not activated it in years. He did not like the wretched devices, believing them to be impersonal and indecorous.

When the phone rang minutes after Bruce left the kitchen, Alfred knew it was Martha, and as hungry as the old man was to hear her voice, he was not sure whether he should answer. Bruce's response to Martha's miraculous survival had perplexed Alfred at first, but now he was beginning to at least somewhat understand it. He had rarely seen Bruce so emotional. It was almost a reverse of his reaction to Martha's 'death,' when he had closed himself off so completely that had nearly ended up dying.

Alfred had a second motive for not answering the phone: He wanted terribly to see Martha and he knew Bruce was right in his prediction that she would come to Wayne Manor. Fifteen minutes after the bell on the phone went silent, the woman Alfred feared he would never see again stumbled frantically through the kitchen's service door. He had barely registered her wet, windblown hair and oversized clothes before she threw herself, sobbing, into his arms.

His straitlaced upbringing had always prevented Alfred from being entirely comfortable with Martha's casual hugs, though he eventually managed to accept them without tensing up. This time his embrace was wholehearted and strong.

"We thought that we had lost you," he whispered into her hair as his arms tightened around her.

His use of the word 'we,' caused Martha to remember the other man who lived at Wayne Manor. She pulled away and asked, "Is he here?"

Alfred hesitated. "Martha –"

"Is he all right?" she asked immediately. "Where is he?"

Placing a firm hand on each of Martha's shoulders, Alfred delivered Bruce's message, adding as gently as he could, "But he can't see you, Martha. Not now."

"_Why_?" Hurt and fear spilled over from her wet, wide eyes and the old man felt himself close to breaking his promise.

He tried to explain. "When he thought you had died… you can't imagine what he's been through..."

"That's why I have to see him," Martha pleaded. "I have to know that he's all right."

Alfred ran a withered hand along her cheek. "He will be. But you must give him time."

"I don't understand," she said, her voice trembling. But she allowed Alfred to lead her to the kitchen table and pour her a cup of blue tea. And although he could see how terribly she wanted to, she did not ask to see Bruce again.

* * *

As soon as Martha flew back to Metropolis, Alfred touched a keypad next to the kitchen door and waited for a security monitor to slide out of a hidden wall panel. He studied it for a moment, saw a red dot moving in Bruce's bedroom and headed up to the second floor.

Bruce was throwing a handful of socks into a suitcase when Alfred entered the room without knocking.

"She was here?" he asked, without looking up.

Alfred's eyes flicked to the suitcase. "She just left," he said. "In tears."

Bruce struggled to keep his face impassive; it was one of the rare times that he failed. He walked across the bedroom, opened a drawer and cradled a few pairs of jeans in his free arm. The old butler watched without asking Bruce what he was doing

"Have your feelings for her changed?" Alfred asked.

Bruce pushed the drawer closed. "No," he said. His feelings were the one thing that hadn't changed.

"Then why are you doing this?" Alfred asked.

"I don't know." This was only partially true and from the look Alfred was giving him, Bruce could see that the old man knew it, too.

"She still loves you," Alfred said.

Bruce walked back to the bed and threw the jeans into his suitcase. He had not wanted Martha to love him until she had told him that she did. Now he desired nothing else. But what would be left of her feelings for him when she found out what he had... what he had done to himself, how the ensuing scandal had affected her family?

And…. He had given up on her. He had said that he wouldn't, when he allowed Roy to drag him out of the woods for her funeral, but he had not searched for her again; had never considered the possibility she was somewhere else – in another universe or another time. He had abandoned Martha, and started to rebuild his life without her. How could she see that as anything but a betrayal?

"Where are you going?" Alfred asked.

"Tim's going to check in occasionally, make sure you're OK," Bruce said, closing the suitcase.

"I do _not_ need anyone to take care of me," Alfred said indignantly.

Bruce gave him a short smile. "But I do."

"Then I want it to be Dr. Kent," Alfred said, his frustration overcoming his attempt to understand the younger man's feelings.

Bruce zipped the suitcase and set it on the hardwood floor. "Call her," he said. "Once I've gone."

* * *

Martha did not return to Metropolis immediately. She stopped first at her apartment, but Lian was not home and Martha no longer had a key. She headed next to the League's upstate New York Headquarters. She hovered curiously over the damaged _Javelin_ – it looked different than the one her father had grabbed in mid-air six weeks earlier – then slipped into the fortress-like building. Lian, Gren, Meera and Roy and Midori were in the kitchen. They had also ordered pizza. There were only three boxes, Martha noticed. Wally must have gone home.

They didn't see her at first. She stood quietly in the doorway, savoring the sight of them, as she tried to erase the look of distress that she knew was layered across her face.

"– don't know what's wrong with him," Lian was saying as she shook some garlic onto a slice of tomato pie.

"Maybe he's off trying to kill himself again," Gren said bitterly. Then he saw Martha, standing white-faced in the kitchen doorway, and he jumped to his feet, hastily swatting pizza crumbs from his jacket.

Lian hit her like a projectile, forgetting, in her excitement, that she had a slice of tomato pie in her hand.

"Sorry," the redhead said as Martha brushed sauce from her mother's t-shirt.

"It's all right," said Martha shakily. She looked at Gren. "It was an accident."

He studied the floor. "Glad you're home."

"We all are," Meera added, leading Martha to the table. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Not really," Martha said. The pizza they'd ordered came from one of Martha's favorite restaurants, a tiny pizzeria in Hudson not far from Midori's apartment. Tonight it felt like she was chewing cardboard. She answered as many questions as she could about where she had been and what it had been like there – Lian said she could still see a few grains of sand in Martha's hair – then listened as her teammates told her what had happened while she had been gone, presumed to be dead.

She was pleased to hear that Midori was moving in with Roy and that Lian was approaching her third week in recovery, but little else of the news was pleasant. Their account of her funeral nearly made her lose the slice of pizza she had barely managed to finish. By unspoken consensus – or maybe Meera had cautioned them telepathically – no one mentioned what had happened with Bruce, but it was clear that everyone had been affected by what they had believed to be her death.

"It's all my fault," said Meera, and her voice was thick with regret. "When you – disappeared – there was this blinding pain, and then _nothing_. When I've felt those things before, the person was always dead."

"We should have kept searching," said Roy heavily. "We should have given it more than a day."

"I gave it almost three," Lian pointed out. "But in my heart," she confessed to Martha, "I believed you were – you know."

Martha pushed her plate to the side. "What were you supposed to do?" she asked. "Even if you'd known I was alive, you couldn't have gotten to me. I think it's ridiculous for you to blame yourselves."

"I might have been able to track the path of particles from the explosion," Midori remorsefully. "Maybe –"

"You could not have found me," said Martha firmly. They were quiet for a while, then Roy leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

"Have you heard from Kurdoon?" she asked.

Gren nodded. "They've got Jordan back at Oa. They're going to try to help him."

"They should have done that decades ago," said Martha darkly.

"Maybe Lantern Corps needs its own shrink," Roy said. "They can't have ours." Martha offered him a weak smile, then turned to Meera.

"When we were fighting Parallax, I asked you what he was planning to do with that device he had," she said. "He told me it wasn't a bomb."

Meera shuddered. "It was so creepy. He can manipulate time?" She looked around the room for confirmation.

"At one point he could," said Gren, who considered studying the League's history a part of his training. "He tried to turn it back once and re-shuffle the universe."

"Well, this was sort of the same thing," said Meera. "He planned to de-evolve humanity and start all over again. With himself as sort of – a wrathful God who would make sure people behaved themselves.

"Lots of positive reinforcement for people who did the right thing," she added. "Unimaginable consequences for those who crossed whatever lines he drew."

"Sounds like my dad," said Gren wryly. "Except for the positive reinforcement."

Parallax's mechanism would have triggered de-evolutionary process, Meera explained. The meteor that had formed Barringer crater had aggravated an earthquake fault that lay just below the edge of the basin. By planting the machine on top of the fault line, he could send its effects through the Earth's tectonic plates, almost like a line of dominoes.

After a silent moment, Martha said, "I want to go to the California legislature and protest the rebuilding of Coast City."

"We'll all go," Roy said. "But you know, most of us did that years ago, during the hearings, and no one listened."

Martha nodded. "I want to do it anyway." She slipped from her chair. "I should head back."

"To Gotham?" Lian asked eagerly.

"No," Martha said hoarsely, and everyone pretended not notice the hurt that broke across her tired features. "I didn't see my parents for very long. I guess I'd better go back to Metropolis."

"Come home tomorrow?" Lian asked.

Martha nodded. "I… I guess I lost my key."

Lian promised to have another made.

Martha was near the building's rear entrance, fumbling with her hologram projector, when she heard Roy's voice behind her.

"One of us never gave up on you," he said.

She could not turn around. If she looked at him, she would start to cry again.

"When Lian was a little girl," Roy said, "I was in love with this woman. Donna Troy."

Martha nodded. "I remember Lian talking about her."

"When Donna was killed, Lian would spend hours sitting out in the garden, waiting for her to come back," he continued. "Why wouldn't she? She was four years old and half the people we'd buried had somehow managed to come traipsing back relatively undamaged. Death's supposed to be permanent, but somehow, with us, it isn't always.

"Then sometimes they come back all screwed up," said Roy. "Or it seems to be them, but it isn't. You know the first thing Bruce asked me when he saw that you were alive?"

"What?" Martha, her voice breaking.

" 'Is it really her?' " Roy said.

Martha half-stifled a sob as her hand flew up to cover her eyes.

"It's going to be all right," Roy said. "Give him time."

"Everyone keeps saying that," Martha whispered.

Roy drew her hand away from her face and clasped it in his own. "Everyone's right."

* * *

It was almost eleven o'clock when Martha touched down on the rooftop garden. Her mother was usually in bed by then, and her father out patrolling, but both of them were waiting for her.

"Are you OK?" Clark asked. For the first time, Martha noticed a streak of gray in the stubble that peppered his cheeks.

"Yeah," Martha said, not looking at him.

"Do you want to talk?" Lois asked. Martha shook her head.

"I stopped by headquarters," she said. "Or I would have been home earlier. Sorry about – you know – before."

She stared into the thick glass coffee table and saw the reflection of her parents trading worried glances.

"We're just so glad you're home," Clark said and Lois wondered through her tears when they would all stop crying.

Clay came out a few moments later and offered his sister his bedroom; Martha's own room had been converted years before into a second office that the trio of reporters in her family shared. But as she listened with increasing sleepiness to the impromptu brainstorming session her family started to explain her return from presumed death, Martha felt herself fading away. As she cuddled against the fuzzy softness of her parents' living room sofa, she only vaguely realized that Clark had tucked a blanket around her.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Aftershocks.

* * *

_


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

Bows to beta-reader arg914.

* * *

Even the best reporters shy away from writing about people they care about. In addition to ever-present concerns about objectivity, there's a performance anxiety of sorts: It always seems harder to find the words that will truly do a loved one justice. Neither Clark nor Clay felt comfortable reporting on Martha's return from presumed death; Lois did not share their uneasiness, nor did she feel even remotely self-conscious about running the story under a banner headline.

In an exclusive Daily Planet interview that was later carried on front pages of newspapers worldwide, Martha described her experiences on the brutal desert planet, a place, Lois reported, to which the young doctor had been consigned by the supervillian Parallax. Specific details of the kidnapping – and Martha's subsequent rescue by the Justice League – could not be released in the name of planetary security, but the team's leader, Arsenal, assured the public that Parallax had been defeated and was unlikely to threaten the Earth again.

Martha, who now felt as proprietary toward Hal Jordan as she did Harvey Dent, objected to the words "defeated" and "threaten," both of which had been chosen by Lois during an imaginary interview with Roy. Clark sided with his wife, pointing out that there was no guarantee that the 'therapy' Martha and Meera had foisted on Hal would last and that Parallax's previous attempt to redeem himself had plainly resulted in a major backslide.

When Roy, in a quick phone call, approved the words Lois had put in his mouth, Martha gave up. Explaining her failure to be dead was quickly becoming her least troubling problem.

She had no clothes. Her medical books were gone. Besides the new apartment key Lian had presented to her with great jubilation, Martha now owned only a collection of stuffed superhero dolls – with the Green Lantern figure curiously missing – the oversized t-shirt from Moscow and her much-maligned Micro-Cooper hybrid.

That the car remained in her possession was an accident. Lois had left Lian in charge of disposing of Martha's belongings. When the second charity organization she contacted politely refused to accept the Micro-Cooper as a donation, Lian drove the garish two-cylinder automobile to the Narrows, unlocked all of the doors and left it with the key in the ignition. No one touched it. On his first night back as Batman, Bruce saw the car parked alone on a street four blocks from Crime Alley and had it towed to Wayne Manor.

He had apparently been working on the car; most of its guts were on the cement floor of the mansion's garage. Martha was driving a rental with as much character, she complained to Lian, "as a Triscuit."

Considerably worse than the loss of her possessions was an unexpected plunge in her standing as a staff psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum.

Lawrence Adrienne had not wanted to allow Martha to resume her fellowship. He disliked superheroes, believing their flamboyant existence escalated criminal activity rather than prevented it. He was even less fond of their hangers on and he considered Martha one of the latter. The fact that Martha's contract permitted her unpaid time off to act as some sort of glorified field medic for a bunch of costumed grandstanders was offensive to the new director. He had forwarded the contract to the asylum's legal experts in the hopes that they could find a way for him to break it without repercussions.

It was only the fear of bad publicity and a breach-of-contract lawsuit that eventually prompted Adrienne to allow Martha to return to work. He made it clear that he did so reluctantly and from her first hour back, it seemed as though he was intent on making her job difficult, if not impossible, to do adequately.

This was a nightmare to Martha, who was barely satisfied with doing her job well, let alone passably. Her patients, who had been understandably transferred to other psychiatrists during her disappearance, were not returned to her care. During Persky's tenure, Martha had been assigned some of the asylum's toughest cases – she thrived under the challenge. Now she was responsible for Arkham's most colorless residents – a few meta-villains who were not technically insane, but could not be contained elsewhere, and some old-timers, made docile by age or drugs.

The one exception to her consignment – literally, as well as metaphorically – to the asylum basement was Harvey. Adrienne allowed Martha to continue to treat him; he was too much trouble to assign to anyone else.

Even this, however, was a crushing disappointment. Harvey was so angry at Martha for having put herself in danger that he showed not an iota of gladness at seeing her alive. He would follow her sullenly to her small windowless office and glare at her for an hour, until she finally gave up and returned him to his cell. When Adrienne found out about these unauthorized excursions, he placed a written reprimand in Martha's personnel file. Future sessions with Harvey, he said brusquely, were to occur in a secured interview booth.

As difficult as her life had become in the days since her return to Earth, nothing tormented Martha as much as the vision of Bruce lying near death on the floor outside of Alfred's bedroom, driven by grief and exhaustion into mistakenly consuming a near-fatal overdose of brandy and barbiturates. Martha needed desperately to know that he was OK; this concern eclipsed even her near-consuming fear that his brush with death, coupled with the ensuing public humiliation, had convinced him to re-think the desirability of having anything to do with her.

More than anything else while she was away, Martha had envisioned herself coming home to him. But Bruce would not see her, he had left town in order to keep her away. Alfred and Roy had advised Martha to give Bruce time, but it had been a week and he was still gone.

"You must not doubt his feelings for you," Alfred had said as she stared desolately at a pile of untouched strawberry pancakes a few days after she returned to Gotham City. But she could not help it. As terribly as she had missed Bruce during her exile, she missed him even more now.

Arkham had finally become the hell for her that it had always been for others, but Martha now spent most of her time there. Adrienne made it clear that he expected her to make up the six weeks she had lost as soon as possible; she wouldn't see a weekend until sometime the following year.

She was just removing the lab coat she was now required to wear – despite her protestation that the garment served as a barrier between herself and her patients – when her cell phone chimed. Martha checked the caller ID immediately, hoping that it might be Bruce, or at least Alfred with news of him. It was Gren.

"Hey," she said wearily.

"I'm outside your window," he informed her.

If Adrienne saw Gren hovering around out there, he'd probably write her up for unauthorized visitation by a superhero, or something equally as obnoxious. Martha was too demoralized to care.

"It's not my window anymore," she said, explaining. She was gratified by the cascade of obscenities Gren showered upon her new boss.

"Get some dinner with me," he said. "And we'll figure out a way to stick him in a cell with Freaky Freddy."

As disheartened as she was, this image made Martha laugh. Fred Shaeffer liked to murder people and shave off all of their body hair. Gren, who had sported a long blonde ponytail for most of his adult life, found the shearing fetish particularly creepy.

"So things are starting out a little tough," he said, half an hour later, as he bit into a drooping slice of pizza. "Your boss is an asshole. And your stuff is gone. But at least you're not breathing sand and scarfing down cactus balls."

She nodded and hoped he wouldn't mention Bruce. He didn't.

They were halfway through the pizza when something occurred to Martha.

"Gren," she asked. "Did you ask Lian if she wanted to come with us?"

He looked a little uncomfortable, but before he could answer, their heads twitched in unison and Meera's voice brought an end to what had almost been a relaxing dinner.

Gren half-rose so he could get to his wallet. "Damn," he said. "Double trouble."

* * *

Halfway through the 24-hour plane flight, Bruce picked up an old Gotham Gazette a previous passenger had tucked into the seat pocket in front of him and absently began reading. He had avoided newspapers during the weeks he'd spent recovering from the overdose, but when he started patrolling again, he had resumed his habit of studying the Gazette with his waking cup of coffee.

His eyes drifted past a banner headline exposing some sort of insurance fraud in the reconstruction of the Wal-Mart, to an article below the fold of the front page. It was the paper's semi-annual report on the crime rate in Gotham. From September to April, the incidence of violent crime in the city had dropped a stunning twenty percent. Bruce re-read the statistic with surprise and recognition: The decline had started about the time Batman and Superwoman stopped squabbling and started working together.

Lakeeta Reardon, who was quoted liberally in the article, seemed to have reached a similar conclusion. Although she was quick to credit her own hardworking officers, she pointed to anecdotal reports of what seemed to be a new World's Finest team – Batman and Superwoman – and some additional support by the crimefighter Quiver – as having had a profound effect on the city's felony rate.

Bruce rested the paper on his lap and leaned back against his headrest. In the back of his mind, he suddenly realized, he had felt almost selfish spending so much time with Martha, even when they were patrolling. Working with her had been enjoyable and therefore, he had imagined, somehow less effective. But they had done some good together.

And with this understanding came another insight: Martha had not rushed to his home on the night of her return because she felt outraged or abandoned. She did not pity him. She had wrenched herself from an ecstatic family reunion because…. Bruce straightened slowly in his seat as the truth of it hit him.

A cool hand touched his shoulder. "Is there anything I can do for you, sir?" a young flight attendant asked, a smile fixed upon her weary face.

"You couldn't turn the plane around, could you?" he asked.

But he wasn't ready. When the plane landed in Lhasa, he walked immediately to the ticket counter to purchase ticket back to Gotham and he couldn't manage to push out the words. After struggling with himself, Bruce walked across the small airport, found his suitcase and stepped out into a rainstorm in search of a cab.

About fifty feet lay between the end of the road and the sheltered entrance to the block-long monastery. By the time Bruce had pushed through the heavy wooden door, he was drenched. The monk who greeted him rushed over with alarm, quickly producing a coarse blanket to drape over the dripping visitor's shoulders. He smiled when Bruce gave his name, declared that he had been expected and led him through a maze of stone hallways until they reached a small room at the top of the second floor.

The monk tapped on the door, placed his hands together and bowed deeply to the man who opened it.

"Thank you," said Jangbu Sangye in Tibetan. He looked past the monk, eyes twinkling, and added in English, "Hello, Bruce."

"Hi, Pat," Bruce replied, and followed the Fifteenth Dalai Lama into his modest quarters.

* * *

By the time Martha and Gren rushed out of Sartelli's Pizzeria, Bruce had already spent days in deep mediation – and deeper conversations with Pat – but Martha still had no idea where he was. She was grateful for Meera's call, even though it meant no sleep on a Friday night when she was scheduled to work early on Saturday.

Her assignment was somewhat disappointing, though she understood why Arsenal selected her to accompany Wonder Woman, Lian and the Flash's daughter, Blitz to Peru, where the aftermath of a small meteor crash had seemed to send much of the population of a small town into a murderous rage. Insanity was, after all, her specialty, Martha reminded herself, as Gren joined the remainder of the team to help the Teen Titans battle some sort of exotic extraterrestrial menace.

But it had been a frustrating mission. While Blitz and Quiver rescued the brutalized, shell-shocked victims from their attackers – who were in many cases family members and friends – Superwoman and Wonder Woman quarantined their gibbering, glaze-eyed offenders, none of whom could as much as remember their own names.

The rescue and round-up hadn't taken long, but Martha had spent hours trying to determine the cause of the outbreak of violent madness without any success. A few of the unaffected townspeople suggested that something about the meteor crash might have triggered the insanity; Martha thought this unlikely, but collected samples from the cooling rock and the site around it, hoping perhaps Midori could find something that might lead to a cure, or at least an explanation, for the mass madness.

Eventually, Martha could think of nothing else to do and after providing the authorities with all the information she had, accompanied her teammates home.

* * *

Pat settled on a faded green cushion, his robed knees a few inches from Bruce's denim-covered ones.

"So," he said. "You're all packed."

Bruce nodded. "Time for me to go home."

"Are you sure?" asked Pat. "You have not been here for very long."

Bruce considered this. "She was gone for six weeks," he said. "And the time I've spent away has seemed just as long."

"Are you still afraid?" Pat asked. "Do you still have doubts?"

Bruce considered this. "I'm afraid of some things," he said. "But I don't have any more doubts."

Pat smiled. "A fine answer. What worries you?"

Bruce shook his head. "The usual. That I'll screw it up."

"And what else?" asked Pat, looking at Bruce intently.

"Mainly that," said Bruce, but when the Dalai Lama raised an eyebrow, he added. "As long as it's really her, I think I'm good with the other stuff."

Pat continued to look at him.

"What?" Bruce asked with considerably less exasperation than he might have had he not spent a week in day-long meditation.

"You have said that you feel safe with her," said Pat. "But you have also expressed fears that you might 'lose it,' when you see her again."

Bruce nodded nervously.

"I have known you for more than thirty years," Pat said. "And if you will forgive me for saying so, 'losing it' has always seemed to be something that has frightened you."

When Bruce's eyes moved to the mat below them, Pat continued, "Having met Martha, I am confident that whatever it is that you're afraid of losing, she would help you find it."

Despite himself, Bruce smiled.

"Yeah," he said softly.

"There's just one other matter," Pat said. Bruce shot an uncomfortable look at his watch.

"Any more soul-baring," he said, "And I'm going to miss my plane."

"Your plane will wait," Pat answered, adding, "The way you have described this relationship, with all of its complications – it is not something you can enter into without making a true commitment. You are turning pale, Bruce."

"I'm not," said Bruce, who had started to lose color at the word "commitment."

Pat studied him inquiringly. "I do not doubt your devotion to this woman. Why does a word cause you so much discomfort?"

"What if I commit myself," Bruce asked, "And then I can't make her happy?"

"I have seen you make her happy," Pat replied, still puzzled.

"There's one way I haven't tried to make her happy yet," Bruce said wryly. She was half his age. And she was _Superwoman_.

Pat brightened with understanding. "Patience, communication," he counseled.

Bruce sought his watch again and started to rise from his knees. "That plane –"

Pat cupped his wrist with a gentle hand, prodding Bruce reluctantly back on his cushion.

"The more of yourself you put into this relationship, the more you risk getting hurt," he said.

"Yeah," Bruce admitted.

"And the more you risk becoming happy," added the Dalai Lama. "Which scares you more?"

* * *

Martha skipped patrol the next evening to catch up on work. She wasn't home when Quiver returned to the apartment sometime after four in the morning, shaking out her hair and craving a shower and her soft bed. Lian had just pulled an oversized t-shirt over her head when she heard the front door slam.

"Diana's known me all my life," Martha told Lian bitterly as she threw herself on their increasingly threadbare teal couch. "And now she's acting all weird around me."

Lian accurately considered herself an astute observer of such interactions, but she had not noticed this. "When did you see her last?" she asked, thinking she might be missing something.

"Yesterday, in Peru," Martha responded. "You saw how she was."

Failing to recall a single sign of discomfort on Wonder Woman's part, Lian said, "She seemed all right to me."

"She isn't," Martha said, her face darkening. "She blames me for what happened to Bruce. And so does your ex-husband."

Frowning, Lian asked, "When did you see Timmy?"

"A few days ago, when I went to visit Alfred," Martha said. "He walked into the kitchen when we were having breakfast and acted as if I wasn't even in the room."

"Well," said Lian reasonably. "You are guilty of being my best friend." She could not see either Tim or Diana blaming Martha for something that happened when she was marooned in another universe.

It was almost dawn. "You might want to get some sleep," Lian added gently. "You have to go work this morning, don't you?"

"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine," Martha snarled and now Lian knew something was wrong, not with Wonder Woman or Tim, but with her roommate.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "I mean – a ton of stuff, I know – but what's getting you so upset right now?"

Martha looked up at her, her eyes glossy and hard. "I shouldn't have come home," she said. "At least when I was sucking down sand, I could pretend there were people who cared about me."

She swung around abruptly and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door so hard behind her that she tore out the doorknob. Lian shivered as she watched the small brass globe disappear into the bathroom.

She waited until she heard the blast of the shower and then reached for the phone.

"Hey, Emma," she whispered into the receiver. "Is Meera there?"

Martha spent an hour and a half in the shower, long after the hot water had given way to cold. She did not come out until Lian knocked timidly at the door and reported the time; Martha had less than half an hour to get ready for work.

When she stepped out of the bathroom wearing a damp towel, her anger seemed to have evaporated, but Lian quickly lost any sense of relief from her roommate's change in mood.

"What happened to the doorknob?" she asked Lian.

"You don't remember?" Lian asked uneasily.

"No," said Martha, who did not seem disturbed by the memory loss – or anything else. She stared vacantly at Lian's right shoulder until the redhead hesitantly asked if she might not want to get dressed.

Once Martha had meandered into her bedroom, Lian looked at the clock. Meera was on her way to the airport. She had agreed to fly to Gotham City as soon as Lian reported the personality change in their ordinarily even-tempered teammate. Meera was a psychologist who specialized in post-traumatic stress disorder and she agreed with Lian that Martha might be showing signs of the illness.

Gren was still in space, doing clean-up with a few of the Titans, so Meera would have to travel the old-fashioned way. Fortunately, most airlines allowed members of the Justice League to fly free. Meera would land in Gotham City an hour or two before Martha came home from work. As her roommate wandered back out of her bedroom, Lian hoped that would be soon enough.

Martha was dressed, but she had not put on make-up and her wet hair clung, uncombed, around her face. She walked over to her briefcase, tilted her head at it curiously, then hefted it experimentally, as if she was choosing a new bowling ball.

"Maybe you shouldn't go to work today?" Lian suggested meekly.

Martha's eyes flared with such anger that Lian felt thankful her roommate didn't have her father's heat vision.

"Right," she said. "So that son-of-a-bitch can fire me." And as Lian opened her mouth without knowing exactly what was going to come out, Martha disappeared.

Lian saw immediately that Martha had used the door: It was lying on the floor of the apartment and was now in need of a new bottom hinge. As she propped it back up against the frame, Lian wondered if there could be a more dangerous place for her best friend to be than in an asylum for the criminally insane.

* * *

Alfred ran a dish rag mechanically around a sole dinner plate, rinsed it until his fingertips started to pucker and placed it into the drainer. He thought twice about picking more tomatoes – they were bursting from their vines, but his refrigerator was now filled with marinara sauce, vegetarian chili, salad and salsa. He forgotten how much Bruce, with his exercise-induced high metabolism, could eat in a day, or how little he himself needed to get by.

Nor had he remembered how much his own work depended upon Bruce being there, on being Batman. Most of Alfred's chores had nothing to do with dusting. He now found himself with hours of time on his hands.

When the phone rang, he assumed it would be Dick or Kory. He had spoken to Tim earlier and expected to see Martha when she finished work. But when Alfred heard the voice on the other end of the receiver, the nagging tightness in his chest melted away.

"What are we having for dinner?" Bruce asked, as if he had stepped out of the house only a few hours earlier.

"Where are you?" the old man demanded.

"I just left my lawyer's," Bruce said. That meant he was on Howard Street, about fifteen minutes away.

"Where are you going now?" Alfred asked.

"I'm coming home to take a shower."

"And then?" Alfred asked hopefully.

"And then I'm going out again," said Bruce.

Alfred felt his cheeks rise into the rims of his glasses in a smile so wide it almost hurt. It was far too early for Bruce to mean he was going out as Batman. As soon as he set the receiver back onto its cradle, the elderly butler hurried to the master bathroom to exchange the towels he had laid out just a day earlier with fresher ones. Then he went out to the garden to pick some flowers.

* * *

"I shouldn't have let her go to work," Lian told Meera as they drove away from the airport. It had been a rough flight and Meera, having been spoiled by the unique transportation services provided by Gren and the _Javelin_, had not enjoyed it.

"It doesn't sound like you could have stopped her," Meera said. "What happened when you called Arkham this afternoon?"

"She didn't sound good," Lian said. "She kind of fluctuated between confused and angry and scared."

Meera said thoughtfully, "Martha used those words to describe the assailants in her report on the incident in Peru."

Lian rammed her foot onto the brake pedal, sending both of them flying toward the windshield. Meera winced where the seatbelt cut into her shoulder.

"She also used the words 'murderous rage,' in that report," Lian said.

* * *

By the time Martha made it to her basement office that morning, she had realized that she was feeling a little "off." Driving to work, she had missed the exit to Arkham, which nearly caused her to be late clocking in. She then headed up to her old office, forgetting it was now occupied by a sophomoric first-year fellow named Jesse Trelles.

Trelles had no trouble reminding Martha that she no longer belonged on the second floor; he did suggest that she was welcome to visit her old office anytime she felt like bringing him a cup of coffee. He was lucky Martha's fury had melted into confusion again. Many of Arkham's doctors had been attacked by inmates; Trelles barely missed being the first to have been gravely injured by another fellow.

She somehow managed to get through the day, aided, in part, by Adrienne's involvement in a series of meetings. The director's preoccupation with budget and policy kept him from noticing that Martha skipped several patient sessions and forgot to return Harvey to his cell after another silent meeting in the secured interview room. She managed to find her way home, but by then she was raving.

* * *

Bruce was sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling on his socks between sips of coffee, when Meera's voice burst unceremoniously into his head.

_Bruce. _

"Yeah," he said, frowning as he reached for a shoe. In seven years, Meera had never called him by his first name when contacting him telepathically.

_We need you at Martha's apartment right now._

"What's wrong?" he asked, quickly getting to his feet.

_I'll tell you once you're on your way. Please hurry._

* * *

As soon as Martha flung down the still-detached apartment door, Meera had sensed what was wrong with her.

_She's not alone,_ she told Lian. _There's something in there with her._

"In _where_?" whispered Lian as Martha walked over to the refrigerator door and ripped it from its hinges.

"Martha," said Meera gently, as her teammate stared curiously at the refrigerator door in her hand. "Can you come here, sweetie?"

Martha's eyes widened in dread and she backed against the kitchen sink. Before Meera could stop her, Lian took a quick step toward her roommate, one hand outstretched, and Martha threw the steel door at her.

_It's in her brain_, Meera answered as Lian picked herself up off the floor. _Some sort of a… __non-corporeal alien presence... like a psychic tapeworm. _

_Eww,_ Lian responded, as she cautiously backed into the living room. _Something's taken over her brain?_

_It must not have total control over her, or she would have hit you with that door, _Meera told her. _She wouldn't have given you time to duck._

_What are we going to do_? asked Lian as Martha started edging around the kitchen like a trapped animal.

"You told everyone I was dead," she shouted at Meera. "You're here to kill me."

Aching, Meera said, "Oh, no, honey. I want to help –" She gave up as Martha tore a drawer full of silverware away from the counter. Knives, forks and chopsticks went flying around the room as Martha swung the drawer by its handle as if it were an oddly-shaped sword.

_I think I can get rid of it,_ Meera told Lian, as both women dropped to the ground. _But I have to get near her. And she's got to hold still._

Lian's eyes slid above the weight bench, to a shelf where a slim silver bracelet lay next to a pair of lifting gloves. _If we could get the bracelet on her_, she suggested. _But she won't let us close enough._

As if to prove this, Martha scrambled into her bedroom. Another door flew off its hinges.

"I've called Bruce," Meera told Lian as they rose cautiously to their feet.

"He's out of town," Lian said resentfully. She craned her head around the room so she could see into the hallway. The bedroom door lay in splinters, but there was no sign of Martha.

"He just got back," Meera said. "He's almost here." She hoped Bruce's presence might soothe Martha.

Lian was clutching the silver bracelet when Bruce stepped through the empty door frame a few minutes later. He stared at the fallen door, then looked around the living room.

"Where is she?" he asked.

"In her bedroom," whispered Meera. "If you can get the bracelet on her.…"

Bruce nodded and took the bangle from Lian.

"Martha," Meera said cautiously, as the three of them slipped into her bedroom. "Bruce is here. He's –"

"No!" said Martha wildly. "I don't want him to see me like this."

It was the first time since she had walked into the apartment that Martha seemed to realize something was wrong with herself, and in the moment of hesitation this understanding brought, Bruce dove across the room and snapped the bracelet around her wrist.

Martha resisted instantly, but it was too late. With the bracelet in place, Bruce was much stronger than she was, even in her deranged state. He wrapped both arms around her from behind and as she struggled against him futilely, he looked questioningly at Meera.

"Sit her on the bed," the telepath instructed. Bruce settled onto the mattress and pulled himself up against the headboard, dragging a thrashing Martha with him. As Lian watched fearfully by the door, Meera sat on the edge of the bed and touched Martha's temple.

It did not seem as though Meera was much of doing anything, other than staring at the top of her friend's head, but after a few minutes, Martha stopped struggling, and shortly after that, her head fell back against Bruce's chest and she closed her eyes.

Tentatively, Lian stepped forward. "Is she unconscious?"

Meera lifted herself from the edge of the bed. "She's asleep."

Bruce steadied Martha's head as it lolled against his shoulder and asked softly, "It's gone?"

"Yes," said Meera, watching him brush Martha's bangs out of her eyes. She looked at Lian. "We've got to get to Peru.

"Keep holding her, Bruce," she added. "She may experience a few aftershocks."

"OK," he said, without taking his eyes from Martha's tranquil face.

Lian followed Meera into the living room.

"Aftershocks?" she asked skeptically.

Meera smiled. "Isn't his birthday coming up?"

* * *

Bruce opened his eyes in time to watch Martha's hand slide from his shoulder to the snooze button on the bleating alarm clock. Without removing her face from his chest, she swatted blindly at the circular knob until the clock was silent, then returned her warm palm to a spot just below his collarbone.

He had spent the night savoring this chance to hold Martha after not seeing or touching her for almost two months and was faintly surprised to see that it was morning. He rarely fell asleep without meaning to, but the hours had seemed to slip away. It was probably the jet lag, he thought, as Martha wriggled sleepily against him, then lifted her head, puzzled to be sprawled upon such an oddly-shaped mattress. Bruce watched as she blinked herself awake. The memory of the past night was slowly returning to her; he could see it in troubled confusion that was spreading across her weary face.

Her gaze grew solemn as it met his.

"Hi," she whispered.

"Hi," he answered gravely and as their eyes held irresistibly together, he reached up to pull her mouth to his.

But, abruptly, Martha was moving away from him. As she pulled herself into a sitting position, Bruce recognized the uncertainty and the embarrassment on her face, though he was not sure what had put them there.

"I've got to go to work," Martha murmured. She slipped from the bed and took a few wobbly steps across the room.

Bruce swung his legs over the edge of the bed. "You're in no shape to go to Arkham today."

Martha stared at the fractured remains of her bedroom door. "I'll get fired," she said faintly.

"Then I'll drive you," he said and to his relief, she nodded gratefully, before she disappeared into the bathroom.

* * *

It was a brilliant June morning. Physically, Martha was almost fully recovered from her bout with the psychic parasite by the time she walked through the gates of Arkham. She was still mortified, however, that the first three times Bruce had seen her since her return to Earth, she had been either a disheveled, sandy mess with six weeks' distance from a shower, an unkempt maniac or a bedraggled medusa with morning breath. Martha hoped his view of her as she stepped out of his car – clean, hair styled, make-up applied – had at least somewhat offset his memory of these previous occasions.

A call from Lian shortly after Martha's first patient session cheered her up a bit: Quiver was still in Peru, assisting Meera as she methodically extracted formless parasitic entities from dozens of Peruvian townspeople. Most of them had been infected when they had come to investigate the fallen meteorite. Meera was pretty sure Martha had picked up the tapeworm when taking cultures at the site. It explained why no one else on the original team had been possessed. Martha blushed at Lian's teasing remark that she was surprised to find her roommate out of bed. She muttered something about being out cold until her alarm clock went off. She was not sure Lian believed her.

A few minutes before lunchtime, Bruce called to ask how she was feeling and to tell her he'd sent someone to the apartment to fix all of the doors she'd broken. He reminded her that he was coming to pick her up at exactly five o'clock. Something in his voice sent a surge of exhilaration through Martha: Everything was going to be all right between them.

She alternated between nervousness and giddiness for most of the rest of the afternoon. When it came time for her session with Harvey at the end of the day, Martha felt bold enough to play hardball with him.

"I need to apologize to you," she said, as Harvey glowered at the transparent shield between them. "I haven't been fair to you. I didn't want to lose you as a patient, but I've clearly become ineffective as your therapist. You know every doctor on staff. Just tell me which one of them you'd rather see and I'll transfer your records this afternoon."

Flabbergasted, Harvey spoke his first words to Martha in more than a week. "_What_?"

_Score_, Martha thought, relieved that another part of her life was finally falling back into place. "You deserve better care than I can give you."

"No, I don't." shouted Harvey. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

When he saw the smile she could not hold back, he added fiercely. "I need to talk to you." He nodded, indicating the small room around them. "But not here."

Sessions in the booths were always videotaped and the notebook Martha used to record patient interactions was a legal document. She fished a convenience store receipt out of her lab coat pocket, scribbled a quick note and pushed it toward the window. Harvey skimmed it quickly and nodded again.

"You're leaving on time today?" he asked.

"Yeah," Martha said, smiling.

"Good," said Harvey. "You looked like a nightmare yesterday. I hope you go right to bed."

* * *

Bruce was leaning against the door of the jag when Martha stepped through the wrought iron asylum gates and into the parking lot. She stood by the fence for a moment, then took a deep breath and walked over to him.

"Hi," he said, and she noticed his damp hair and fresh clothes. "Um…. Do you want to get some dinner?"

"Sure," Martha said. But she did not attempt to get into the car. She could only stand there, staring up into his dark blue eyes and when Bruce finally moved, it was to lean in to kiss her.

She felt his hand close around hers and his breath on her lips and his fingers lightly tracing a line along her jaw. When he had kissed her before, in the Batcave and in her apartment hallway, it had happened so abruptly and with such desperation that Martha could respond only out of pure instinctive desire. This kiss was different: hungry and deep, but deliberate. It was a choice for more than just surrender during a momentary loss of control. Martha thrust her hands into Bruce's soft, short hair and pulled his mouth harder against hers, forgetting where they were until a loud, ugly honking sound caused them both to jerk back and the parking lot came unpleasantly back into focus.

It was Jesse Trelles, the jerk who had stolen her office, leaning on his horn as he made a scolding gesture at Martha through the window of his air conditioned Lexus Economa. As soon as he saw that he had gotten his message across, he peeled gleefully out of the parking lot.

"Most obnoxious guy on staff," Martha mumbled, as Bruce glared after the Lexus.

"So," he said nervously as they settled in the car a few moments later. "Bistro Cilantro?"

Martha was silent for a moment, then she slanted her head so that their eyes met again. She said hesitantly, "I could – Dinner could wait a few hours, if you… if you wanted."

Bruce opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded. Then he backed the car out of the parking lot and pointed it toward Wayne Manor.

* * *

Alfred had just gotten around to making Bruce's bed when a thump in the hallway outside the bedroom almost made him drop a pillowcase. He stepped through the mahogany trim door frame to investigate and froze in astonishment, the pillowcase comically stretched out between both of his hands.

Martha, floating about a foot off the ground, had pushed Bruce up against the corridor wall and was kissing him fervently. She giggled as Bruce did something to her blouse that made several buttons rain onto the hardwood floor; she then started to unbuckle his black Armani belt. When Bruce noticed his gawking butler, his hand closed over both of Martha's. He nudged her and she drifted back to the floor struggling to suppress another giggle.

Bruce looked at Alfred and nodded at the pillowcase. "Could you do that later?"

Alfred blinked once, then practically flew down the long hallway.

"He's seriously got to consider the Senior Olympics," he heard Martha say before Bruce dragged her into his bedroom.

* * *

Bruce locked the door without letting go of Martha. As soon as his free hand left the knob, he was kissing her again, moving eagerly against her until she felt the back of her legs pressing against the mattress. Without breaking the kiss, he sat down on the bed and pulled her on top of him. His hands moved from her hips to her blouse and there was a ripping sound as the few remaining buttons went flying.

"I'm not gonna end up with any clothes left," Martha whispered as Bruce rolled on top of her.

"Then you're just going to have to stay," he murmured, tracing the swell of her breast with his lips before slowly working his way lower. Martha tangled one hand in his hair, while the other massaged his back and shoulders and she wondered through a haze of pleasure when Bruce had managed to lose his shirt. She did not know how something could feel so exquisitely, intensely real and yet seem like a dream. She had wanted Bruce for so long, and through so much, that she had nearly lost hope that they would ever be together. Now he was making love to her with his mouth and his hands and his heart and Martha could feel him, so aroused. Knowing it was because of her made her dizzy.

Somehow, he must have acquired super-speed, because the rest of her clothes were suddenly gone and she was sobbing with delight, gripping his shoulder with one hand and the bed sheet with the other, straining against him until everything disappeared but a single point of matchless pleasure and she could barely hear her own rapturous cries.

As Martha began to regain her breath and her senses, Bruce leaned his head against her hipbone, before placing a kiss against the inside of her trembling thigh and another one on her belly button. The sweet friction, as he slid up the length of her body, almost undid her again.

He kissed her forehead and her mouth and then his lips were at her ear.

"I love you," he whispered. And, finally, in a stunning coupling of emotion and pleasure, they were together. Martha followed his strong slow rhythm, only vaguely conscious of her enthusiastic moans.

"Oh, Bruce," she gasped. "I love you so much."

He needed to hear it, but her timing could have been better. He had not been with a woman in more than a decade and this heartfelt declaration pushed him immediately past the fragile threshold of control he had been clinging to. It was a measure of the trust Bruce had in Martha and the confidence she gave him that when he lowered his forehead to hers, still panting, he was more amused at himself than embarrassed.

"Sorry," he mumbled, knowing she didn't care.

Martha touched his face. "I like turning you on that much." His cheek curved into a slight smile and he pressed a breathless kiss against her mouth.

But without warning, the body that had fallen against Martha's in slack contentment grew unexpectedly tense. She drew back her fingers, where they had been playing at his cheek and was surprised to find that they were wet.

"Baby?" she asked, looking up at him with concern as Bruce's breath became shallow and ragged.

"I thought I'd never see you again," he whispered, burrowing his face against her neck.

"It's OK," Martha whispered, holding him and stroking his shoulders as they began to shake. "I'm here."

* * *

The alarm on Martha's cell phone chirped cruelly from its perch on Bruce's nightstand. She reached for it quickly, hoping to disable it before it woke him, but she had no sooner thumbed a button on the side of the phone when Bruce, in a single motion, rolled on top of her and deftly pushed the small device out of her hand.

"Call in sick," he murmured as the phone clattered back onto the night table.

Martha considered reminding him that she was still making up for the days she had called in dead, but it was a while before she was able to form coherent words, and by then she had thought the better of it.

"I've gotta go," she said apologetically to the top of his head as Bruce slumped contentedly against her chest. "And I'm going to have fly. We just used up all of my driving time."

"Come home for lunch," he urged, not fully recognizing the implications of his choice of words.

She smiled. "Didn't you say something yesterday about dinner at Bistro Cilantro?"

He sighed and dragged himself up onto his elbows to kiss her. "OK. Pick you up at five. Tell Adrienne I'll kill him if he gives you a hard time today." Martha's account of the new director's treatment of her had infuriated Bruce.

Extracting herself reluctantly from between her lover and the bed, Martha smiled and said warmly, "The hell with him." As she picked up her ruined blouse, she added, "Can I borrow a shirt so I don't have to fly back to my apartment naked?"

"Take any one you want," Bruce said sleepily, enjoying the image of her flying naked. She beamed and picked up the shirt he had discarded near the bottom of the bed. He had the feeling he was never going to get it back.

He had thought he would fall immediately to sleep after Martha kissed him goodbye and slipped out of his bedroom window. They'd slept very little during the night, making love, but also talking: catching up the weeks they'd spent apart and discussing how they might handle the complications that lay ahead. But he found himself surprisingly awake and very hungry. The pair of pajama trousers Alfred had laid out while making Bruce's bed the previous afternoon had ended up halfway across the floor; he pulled them on and wandered into the kitchen.

Alfred was there, slicing a banana into a bowl of steaming oatmeal.

"Morning," Bruce told him, staring sheepishly at a spot on the top of the kitchen island. He felt the butler glance at him, then turn to the refrigerator to find some milk.

"Good morning, sir," said Alfred, as if it were any other day. But in the reflection in the highly polished surface of the stainless steel refrigerator, Bruce saw that the old man was smiling.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Two faces._

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

Bravely beta-read by arg914; nods to the Five Foot Ninja, technical advisor supreme

* * *

The Flash dodged a shower of thorns and dive-rolled behind a mammoth rhododendron.

"Knock off the Captain Kirk moves, Dad," said Blitz, who had joined him in an instant from the other side of the arboretum. She watched him rub his shoulder. "You can run faster than you can roll."

Wally shot a glance around the enormous plant, spotted the eerie army of giant sunflowers rumbling toward them on thick, filthy roots, and said, "Ah, but that _looked_ much cooler."

Blitz struggled not to roll her eyes. "So, what's the deal with plant woman?"

"I don't know," said Wally, who had been enjoying a rare lunch with his daughter Iris before they saw a report of the bizarre attack on a sports bar television. "I haven't seen anything like this since Woodrue tried to take over the world."

"Who?" said Iris in the same tone Wally had once used when his grandfather claimed to have routinely walked to school in five miles of snow.

"Never mind," said Wally as a vine thick with purple morning glories shot across the green toward a gift shop full of cowering tourists. "Make hay while the sunflowers – uh, get the sunflowers."

Blitz blew past him and barreled into the row of floral martinets as they marched mechanically toward the rhododendron. Her father, meanwhile, intercepted the snakelike vine and twisted it back toward his daughter. In less than a second, the sunflower army was bound and petal-free. Blitz stepped away from the wilting bundle, but before she could suggest a plan of attack, a salvo of acorns pelted toward them, as fast as bullets.

"She loves us not," shouted the Flash, as the woman-shaped collection of earth, worms and flora stepped out from behind a collection of evergreens. Both Wests had easily dodged the acorns and were barreling toward the floronic woman.

"Ow," yelled Blitz as an unanticipated volley of high-velocity thorns pelted her in the face. She pushed forward, slamming into her attacker before the tourists pressed against the gift shop window could blink. "Ugh," she added, wincing in disgust, as she found herself sitting in a pile of what appeared to be the muddy, insect-ridden remains of the plant creature. She flung a glop of mud from her fingertips. "It can't be this easy."

"It isn't," said Flash, looking pointedly behind her. Iris, still sitting, turned around and groaned. The plant woman had reconstituted herself from fresh earthly ingredients and was now proceeding toward the wild Wests, as Roy called them, accompanied by a trio of bristling Douglas firs.

"I'm glad we have an artificial Christmas tree," said Iris darkly. She started toward the oncoming evergreens, when her father grabbed her arm.

"Forget about the firs unless they go after somebody," he said. "We finish Gardenia Girl and her shrub army crumbles."

"How do we do that, if she can pop up with a fresh body every time we hit her?" asked Iris. "Even if we vibrate her into dust, she'll just grab herself a new coat of mud."

Wally grinned. "I'm so old and wise," he said. A few whispered instructions later, he disappeared.

Blitz counted skeptically to three, then shot toward the female-shaped plant entity, at the last minute diving, not for her mossy body, but at the ground beneath her. It took less than a second of barehanded digging for Iris to carve a ditch beneath her floral foe; for a fraction of that time, the creature's feet would no longer contact the earth. Iris, who had twisted around so that she was facing upward, ready to fight, watched as her father pulled an oversized black plastic trash bag down around the plant woman, closing it around her straining toes fractions of a second before they touched back upon the earth.

The Flash righted the trash bag. Its contents squirmed for a few minutes, and then dropped into a heap at the bottom of the sack.

"Got a little twisty thing?" he asked his daughter, who was trying to pick the mud out of her fingernails. Iris blew a lock of dusty hair out of her eyes and failed to stifle a laugh.

* * *

"Have you had time to think about my suggestion," Wally asked, as they sped together toward Central City. "About the League?"

"I guess so," said Iris. They bounded over a series of small mountains, enjoying the cool breeze that accompanied the higher altitude. "Everyone seems nice, but they've all been working together so long – it's like they know each other's moves. I felt kinda… awkward."

Wally took her by the elbow and they both stopped. "It won't take you long to get into the rhythm. Midori's been with us just two years – and Superwoman came back around the same time. And they'll – everyone will work with you. You know Roy will make sure you feel like a part of the team."

Iris hesitated. "Does he have to train me?"

"He's grueling, but good," Wally reassured her. He resumed their run and Iris followed. "Think about it. It's just be half-time, the way Superman and his daughter work it."

"Oh, I've seen how they work it," Iris said, as they raced across Lake Superior. "Apparently their idea of half is Superwoman showing up twice as much."

"Well, Superman's got lots more on his plate than the rest of us," Wally said as they broke across the Missouri border as if it were a finish line. "_I_ would never do that to _you_," he added impishly.

This time, Iris didn't hold back the eye roll.

* * *

Superman guided the destroyer-sized container of rice to the brittle golden brown earth and grinned at the crowd of cheering refugees. It wasn't a wholehearted smile. While he considered it a privilege to help provide the people of the arid nation with food, he could not help feeling frustrated: He had been making the same delivery to the same country for three decades. The nation's periodic drought problem was not insurmountable, he had complained earlier to Lois. Its legacy of corruption and inefficiency was another story.

A long shadow fell over the mass of beaming faces and the crowd began to shuffle back. Although he wasn't really in the way, Superman stepped instinctively to the side as Gren Gardner used a cone of solid light to lower another container to the ground, also to the sound of grateful cheers. The Green Lantern nodded sternly in response to the applause, but Superman could tell that the younger man relished the gleams of relief and joy in the eyes of the hungry families surrounding them.

"It's more boring than fighting," Gren confided to Superman as they headed home. "But it's a break from getting all banged up." He rotated his neck, which was stiff from an injury he sustained in space a few days earlier. "I'm gettin' old."

Superman suppressed the urge to laugh. Gren was two months younger than Martha.

"Will we see you Sunday?" Superman asked, as they hovered over the Sierra Nevadas. Gren had somehow become a regular in the months since Superman had first invited him to Sunday dinner. Clark had made the mistake of wondering aloud to his wife if this might not be out of some sort of late-developing interest in Martha.

"He's wasting his time," Lois said bleakly. Clark knew his wife was less impressed than he was with what he considered Gren's considerable maturation, but he suspected her statement might be related to something else altogether and chose not to question it.

Gren nodded and headed off into space. Minutes later, Superman squeezed through an open window in a storage room his wife had declared off-limits to Planet staff and changed into a pair of slacks and a polo shirt. He walked into Lois's office just in time to accompany her to lunch.

* * *

A new café had opened up a block north of the Planet; Lois had wanted to try it for a month. It featured a small outdoor patio decorated with a mosaic of colored recycled glass fragments and a menu that combined exceptionally healthy entrees with deserts so decadent that they more than offset the nutritional value of main offerings.

"I gave Martha a call this morning," Lois said as she plowed through a salad topped with braised peaches and mangos.

Clark set down his fork. "How is she?"

"Ecstatically happy," said Lois in a voice that suggested she did not share her daughter's ecstasy. "For reasons she chose not to share." She watched her husband mentally regroup, trying to find some reason for Martha to be happy other than the one he could not face.

"The new boss letting up on her?" Clark asked hopefully.

"No," Lois said. "He's still trying to make her life a living hell."

Clark frowned. "She might have to get a lawyer."

"Clark," said Lois patiently.

"Was she able to get some new clothes with the credit card we sent her?" Clark asked. "That would have cheered her up."

"That would have cheered Lian up," Lois said. "You know Martha hates that sort of shopping."

Clark's face assumed a thoughtful, distant look that Lois recognized with some alarm to mean he was listening for a possible emergency to respond to in an attempt to escape from the conversation. She resolved immediately to back off. As frustrated as she was at her husband's determination to evade reality, Lois had not seen him for a day and a half and had no wish to drive him away.

"Harvey's started talking to her again," she offered.

The look of relief that broke across Clark's face made Lois feel ashamed. She was trying to push him into acknowledging a truth he wasn't ready to accept. His distress at the thought of an affair between his daughter and Bruce Wayne cut even deeper than she had feared.

Maybe it would end quickly, Lois thought, and they would not have to deal with it at all. Bruce wasn't known for his long-term relationships.

"Well, that's got to be a big triumph," Clark said. "Martha was really upset when he shut down on her."

"Yeah," said Lois kindly. "She feels really good about that. Do you want this last peach? I don't know what they cooked it in, but it's fantastic."

* * *

Even with the sound protectors clamped painfully around his ears, the relentless roar of the aircraft plant was loud enough to make Roy cringe. He wove around a large man testing a hefty-looking blowtorch and strode into the farthest hangar, where a dozen mechanics and at least one engineer were working on the newest _Javelin_.

Roy grinned as he spotted a small figure whose upper body seemed to have been swallowed up by the nose of the shuttle. He was mightily tempted to grab one of Midori's coverall-clad legs as they dangled a few feet over a heavy hydraulic lift, but he had tried this once before and had almost been hit by a wrench. Midori's fighting reflexes had kicked in about a year after she joined the League and her instinct was to swing first and identify bodies later.

Instead, Roy scaled the lift with a grace few men half his age could have managed and stood patiently by Midori until she sensed his presence and withdrew from the panel where she'd been working. When she saw that it was Roy, she pushed back her protective goggles and hugged him.

There was no point in talking inside the hanger. Midori touched a button on the lift and it brought them to the floor, then they walked together into the blinding sunlight.

"So – when do we fly?" he asked, after they broke apart from a hearty kiss. Midori had been working on the _Javelin-13_ since they'd had its prematurely decommissioned predecessor towed from the crater. Roy hadn't seen her in days.

As usual, she took his question more seriously than he meant it. "Not for weeks," she said. "Or even longer, if our workers keep taking vacations."

"Well," said Roy reasonably. "It's summertime."

Midori looked at him questioningly.

"People go on vacation," he explained. "They want to spend time with their families."

She considered this for a moment and countered, "But this is important."

"Families are important," Roy said, adding, "Neglected boyfriends are important, too."

"My crew seems to be comprised largely of heterosexual males," Midori assured him. "So that's not a problem."

Roy tried not to laugh. "It is," he said soberly. As she pondered this, a grin snuck across his face and Midori, finally comprehending, looked at him with concern.

"What can I do to make you feel not neglected?" she asked urgently. "Do you need a hug? Conversation? Compliments? Sex?"

"Yes, please," said Roy, taking her by the hand and leading her to the blue Pontiac he had rented. "But right now I'll settle for a little lunchtime togetherness."

As they sat on the hood of the car and ate the sandwiches Roy had picked up at a nearby Subway, Midori asked Roy if the workers weren't caring for their families best by putting off their vacations in order to help complete the shuttle.

"We protect everyone's family," she pointed out.

"This is true," Roy said, handing her a banana.

"I tried to explain that to Sheppard," Midori said. "But he insisted on going to the hospital to watch his wife have a baby."

"Where _are_ that man's priorities?" Roy asked, shaking his head.

"I don't know," said Midori, who seemed relieved to have found some solidarity in this matter.

"Actually, I think we can give Sheppard a break. In terms of life events, having a baby trumps just about everything else," said Roy, who had no idea how much he would regret this statement in the months to come. "I've always wished I'd been there when Lian was born."

"Well, that's different," said Midori. "Lian's mother was a violent criminal. If you had been there when she was born, you could have gotten her away from Cheshire much sooner."

This was a bit of a touchy subject. Roy gathered the sandwich wrappers and banana peels into a single paper bag and tossed it into a trash receptacle halfway across the parking lot.

"You have a talent with trajectories," Midori said admiringly.

Roy helped her off the hood of the car and took her face in his hands.

"That's not all I have a talent for," he said.

* * *

As devoted as she was to her work, Martha found it nearly impossible to focus on her patients. As they cursed her, threatened her and, in one case, foolishly attempted to spit at her through a Plexiglas divider, she retreated blissfully into her memories of the previous night, reliving Bruce's touch and his words and the peaceful expression on his face as he slept. The sex had been deliriously good – Martha gleefully recalled coaxing a cry of surprised pleasure from her less-than-vocal lover when she did something to him she was pretty sure none of his previous girlfriends had been able to do – but she had felt just as much joy in simply knowing she made him happy.

She was amused and very touched to see that Bruce had walked off the plane from Tibet with what could only be called a battle plan. Martha's role in the first part of this campaign was simple, but essential.

"If I do anything wrong, you have to tell me right away," he had informed her as she snuggled deliciously against his brawny body. "And I know it's not romantic, but I'd appreciate you telling me what do right, at least until I get the hang of it."

"What you did tonight was right," Martha said playfully.

Bruce had tightened his arms around her and explained that he meant for her to remind him about the things that seemed to be more important to women than they were to men, or at least to him: "Anniversaries, Valentine's Day… that stuff. And also, what I'm supposed to do when you're upset. Pat says you don't want me to fix your problems," he had added dubiously. "I'm just supposed to listen."

"Pat knows a lot about women for a celibate monk," Martha said. But then, she added, so did Bruce's other advisor, Alfred, the 93-year-old lifelong bachelor.

"Yeah, I know. I'm getting advice from the experts," Bruce had said wryly.

Martha dropped a few patient files in a drawer and looked at the clock on her computer monitor. It was 3:30 PM. She had some paperwork to do, and then she needed to engineer an unmonitored session with Harvey. That would be less difficult to arrange than she had feared. Nothing Adrienne could have done today – short of firing her – could have upset Martha, but he had in fact spent the day at the state capital, imploring the legislature not to cut Arkham's funding in the face of a severe budget deficit. His absence from the asylum magnified her overall sense of happiness. Unlike Persky, who had tried to balance his administrative duties with an actual psychiatric practice, Adrienne did not see patients, which meant his chances of being out due to an on-the-job injury were less likely. Martha was not sure when she would again feel this free at Arkham. She had not worn her lab coat all day.

As she refined the drug schedule of an old inmate named Karl Hellfern so he would feel less compelled to use his fingernails to mutilate himself, she reviewed her plan to meet with Harvey. There was a rarely used security office near his cell. One of the occupants of Harvey's high-security wing liked to scream nursery rhymes over and over again in an eerie falsetto that spooked most of the guards. Most of them operated out of a less unsettling station in the adjacent wing. Dinnertime at the asylum wasn't until 6 PM – without taking her eyes from her paperwork, Martha reached into her right-hand desk drawer and pocketed a chocolate-flavored nutrition bar – so chances were good that they wouldn't be discovered. It was unlikely, at any rate, that a guard would have reported her for flaunting Adrienne's orders: Most of them liked Martha and hated their boss.

Martha gathered her things together so she could leave quickly once she returned from her session with Harvey. She reminded herself that it had taken more than a week for him to start talking to her again and that she owed him her full attention. She would see Bruce in little more than an hour; she could manage to avoid daydreaming about him for that long.

She dropped Hellfern's file off at the pharmacy, then headed to Harvey's wing, stopping to discreetly pop the lock on the guard's office with a quick twist of the doorknob. She was disappointed to see that Harvey seemed as disgruntled with her as ever.

"Why are _you_ so happy?" he asked sullenly, as she led him to a chair inside the darkened office. "Wayne finally get into your pants?"

Martha hoped her blush had faded before she switched on the weak desk lamp sitting on the guard's desk. _Why, yes,_ she felt like retorting. _As a matter of fact, Wayne did finally get into my pants. _She and Bruce had agreed their relationship would not be a secret, but they did want to keep it private, at least while they grew into it. Martha found herself exceptionally protective of their most intimate time together. She had already disappointed Lian, who, upon finding Bruce's shirt strewn on Martha's bed, had called her earlier, hungry for details. Harvey was farther down on her list of confidants.

"I'd rather find out why you're not so happy," Martha countered. "I mean, enough to spend my first week back not talking to me." She slipped the nutrition bar across the desk. "Something to offset your sumptuous dinner."

He surprised her by glaring at the bar as if it offended him, then turning blazing eyes on her. For a horrible moment, Martha thought he had decided to clam up on her again. Then, more horribly, he did speak.

"Which one of them are you?" he demanded.

"Which one of what?" Martha asked. She hoped mightily that Harvey's "them" didn't start with a capital T. They had worked so hard over the past years to reduce his level of paranoia.

Harvey leaned forward. "You know what I mean," he said, his voice more menacing than she had ever heard it.

With a puzzled frown, Martha stood up and stepped around the desk. To her surprise, he shot to his feet, his scarred features now bearing down on hers.

"I have two faces," he whispered furiously. "You can see them. Where do you hide your other one?"

Understanding and panic rose together in Martha. She wet her lips and started to deny again that she knew what he was talking about.

"The Justice League," Harvey persisted. "You're not just their doctor."

As Martha stared stupidly at him, he added, "You're not Bats or the big blonde. Or Quiver," he added, allowing his eyes to linger briefly on her modest chest. "No offense."

Shaking her head, Martha said, "Harvey, I'm not…"

"Don't lie to me," Harvey interrupted, adding quickly, "I'm not going to tell anyone."

Martha walked slowly back around the desk and dropped into the chair, taking the time to collect herself. "Then who am I? Arsenal?"

Harvey's intent eyes did not waiver from her face. She was a bad liar and they both knew it. He was going to wait her out.

"It should be easy enough to figure out," Martha said finally. "Which one of them was gone for as long as I was?" Wonder Woman and – to Martha's delight – Gren had spent the last few weeks of her disappearance masquerading as Superwoman.

She could see the frustration in his eyes as he considered this. "None of them, from what I could tell," he said. "But there are ways they could have disguised –"

Martha sighed. "Harvey, my parents know Superman. They've known him forever. That's how I got the job with the League.

She added, "Our relationship – yours and mine – is based on trust." She looked at him. "Isn't it, Harvey?"

He nodded reluctantly.

"Well," said Martha. "Other people have to trust me, too."

Harvey sank back into his chair and Martha saw with regret that both sides of his face were drooping.

"I just thought I could help," he muttered.

He spent twenty-three hours a day in an ultra-secure solitary cell. Martha tried to think of a response that didn't include asking him how he thought he could help a world-faring group of superheroes.

"I know it won't stop me from burning in hell," Harvey said. "But it might make me feel better in the meantime."

"You're not going to burn in hell," said Martha gently. "You've done your time there already."

Harvey regarded her with pained eyes. "It didn't feel like hell after you got here. And then you were gone, and the fires stoked right up again."

Martha reached across the desk for his hand. "I'm sorry."

Harvey regarded her unblemished hand where it lay over his larger, scarred one, then pulled away and reached for the nutrition bar. "It doesn't matter. You'll be gone again soon anyway."

"I'm not going to let Adrienne fire me," Martha said firmly.

Harvey ripped open the wrapper and stared at the top of the chocolate-covered bar. "So? You stay another year. Then your fellowship's over." He looked up at her. "Then you leave Gotham City."

* * *

Martha had Bruce pull over as soon as they drove off of the asylum parking lot and gave him a worried account of the conversation with Harvey.

"It doesn't sound like you convinced him," said Bruce.

"I don't think I did," said Martha. "But he has nothing to hold onto, except for his stubborn conviction and my bad acting."

He sat back in the jag's soft leather seat and said thoughtfully, "I believe he's telling the truth about keeping things quiet. He wouldn't do anything to hurt you." He studied Martha with a faint smile. "You know he's crazy about you."

"I know he's crazy," Martha said, reddening.

Bruce unfastened his seatbelt and leaned over to kiss her. She yielded to the pleasure of his warm mouth and strong hands and by the time he broke the kiss, her anxiety about Harvey had nearly vanished.

"If I call Bistro Cilantro now," he said, touching his forehead to hers. "They could have our dinner ready by the time we got there. We could… take it back with us."

Martha laughed. "I see a pattern here. You ask me to dinner, but we never actually go out."

"I do want to take you out tonight," Bruce assured her. "But first I want to take you home."

* * *

Batman's perfectly timed flying sidekick sent the burglar sailing into a pile of used tires at the precise moment that the caped crimefighter's elbow snapped into the temple of the lawbreaker's accomplice.

_Now **that **is the way to impress your girlfriend_, thought Superwoman, who was standing on a roof above them, an unconscious criminal dangling in each fist. She watched the second man crumple to the ground, then glided down to join Batman.

"This is just the kind of date a girl dreams about," she said, after making sure they were the only conscious occupants of the alley. "You're so romantic."

"Incurably," Batman deadpanned, as he grabbed one of the burglars she had captured and secured him to a lamppost.

"And a gentleman," Superwoman observed. "Cuffing my guys first."

He straightened for a moment and looked inquiringly at her. She smiled and nodded, trying to convey as much warmth as she could through the haze of the hologram. This was OK. This was their lives.

Their dinners from Bistro Cilantro had been cold by the time they'd gotten to them; she and Bruce had thrown on enough clothes to spare Alfred embarrassment and gone into the kitchen to heat up their meals. As they sat at the table, waiting for the microwave to chime, Bruce had shown Martha a carefully folded newspaper article, one that credited Gotham's drastically falling crime-rate in part to the combined efforts of Batman and Superwoman. She was as pleased as he had been, and just as surprised. Their team-ups had always been spontaneous. Now Bruce wanted to maximize their effectiveness by developing a series of strategies that would put them together intentionally most nights.

Superwoman smiled at the memory of his anxious face as he proposed the more deliberate partnership.

"I know it's not the most romantic… but you're the only one I'd…."

Martha had cut him off with a kiss. Bruce's life was about Batman's mission. For him to invite her to share it with him was as much of an intimacy as asking her to share his bed. She knew he had worked alone since Tim had graduated from college and moved to Philadelphia. The alliance he was suggesting was Bruce's strange equivalent of asking her to wear his varsity jacket.

Martha had no problem with him planning out their patrols; her own nightly excursions had always lacked focus. Superwoman would simply fly above high-crime areas until she caught someone breaking the law. Bruce called her brand of crimefighting "fishing." His methods were more scientific and significantly more effective.

Nor did she see a conflict with her own life's work, which belonged to Martha, not to Superwoman. She hoped to use her psychiatric research to forward a social agenda she believed would contribute to a healthier society. Bruce was one of the few people who did not laugh off her ideas as overly idealistic.

"What's this?" she had asked, as she noticed a rotating empty day on the hastily drawn schedule he'd jotted down on the back of one of Alfred's paper doilies.

Bruce shrugged. "We need some nights together off-duty."

Martha had thrown herself onto his lap, knocking them both onto the floor and their dinners ended up getting cold again.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Unfinished business_

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

Thanks (as always) to beta reader arg914

* * *

Headquarters was so quiet when Gren touched down on the flight deck and wandered in through the back entrance that for an impossible moment he thought it might be empty. Someone was always on the monitor and since the shuttle was down and she wasn't home when he called, he'd assumed Meera had gotten a ride to upstate New York. Gren knew the telepath was on duty – he'd written the month's schedule – and he figured he'd hang out with her for a while.

As he irritably popped his injured neck, Gren saw that Meera was, as expected, sitting attentively at the monitor, but that she already had company. Lian was slouched at a console a few yards away. The redhead's hair was pulled back in what had become its usual ponytail, she was wearing a pair of glasses Gren had never seen before and – another first – she was scowling into an open book.

"Now you're an intellectual?" he asked, offering Meera a sideways wave as he strode over to inspect the thick hardback. His forehead crinkled when he saw the title: _Combat Planning for Single-Unit Military and Paramilitary Operations. _

"I'm taking a course," Lian explained, as Gren searched the book for a hidden glamour magazine. As his eyebrows climbed, she added indignantly, "I have to do _something_ with all of this extra energy."

"Great," Gren said, relieved at Lian's implication that her sobriety or celibacy, or whatever it was, was still in effect. "That's a good book. I read an earlier edition when I was in college. Where are you taking the course?" he asked.

Lian looked at him through the glasses. Gren noted with amusement that the lenses were made of clear glass. "West Point."

Gren stared at her.

"Well," Lian admitted, "I'm auditing the class, I'm not actually enrolled."

"At West Point," Gren said. "As in the United States Military Academy."

"Well, you know, I just figured," said Lian, as if attending West Point was nothing special, "I might as well learn from the experts. The general was really nice about it when I asked him."

"Does he know you're in recovery?" Gren asked skeptically.

Lian laughed. "Can't break my vow of anonymity."

Gren grinned and pulled out the chair next to hers. As he crossed his legs over the top of an uncluttered section of countertop, he called over to Meera, "Martha fly you here? I phoned to see if you needed a ride, but Emma said you were gone."

"Grabbed a ride at the military base in St. Hubert," Meera replied. "And met up with Lian after her class."

"Martha's kind of busy these days," Lian added wickedly.

"I know," Gren said soberly. "I'd like to kill that son-of-a-bitch boss of hers."

Lian giggled. "Work's not the only thing keeping her busy."

"Shut up, Lian," Meera said, turning back to the monitor.

"What?" Gren asked. Meera didn't answer. He looked back to Lian. "What?"

"She's doing a lot of undercover work," Lian said, her cheeks twitching upward as Gren's bemusement visibly deepened. He caught Meera shaking her head slightly out of the corner of his eye.

"Undercover work," he repeated, beginning to get angry. "You're so fuckin' funny."

Meera spun her chair back around. "Gren…," she said gently.

"What's _wrong_ with her?" Gren said furiously. He had not wanted to believe the gossip-column crap he'd read after Bruce had downed his barbiturate cocktail, even when it became obvious from Gren's conversations with Lian that at least some of it was true. "He's – he's freakin' twice her age… and…."

"He doesn't look it," Lian said admiringly. "He's in such amazing shape –"

Gren pushed himself up out of the chair so violently that it rolled into the middle of the room. "We were all hurting when we thought she was dead," he said bitterly. "Just because not all of us tried to kill ourselves…."

"Bruce did _not_ try to kill himself," Lian said heatedly. "It was an accid –"

"I think Gren knows that," Meera said. "I think he has another concern."

Lian looked at Gren expectantly, as he sulkily grabbed his chair and rolled it back under the console.

"He's disrespecting her father," he muttered.

"This has nothing to do with Clark," Lian said.

Gren glared pointedly at her. "Well, maybe it should."

Lian's retort was lost in the grinding blare of the station's foghorn-like alarm system. She rushed to the monitor, grimacing at the noise. Meera, her eyes locked on the screen, idly reached over to deactivate the alarm.

"Breakout at SuperMax," she reported. "Just one guy – a Robert Simmons?" She touched the screen over Simmons' name, triggering an automatic identity search by the League's computer.

"Robert Simmons," Gren repeated thoughtfully. He started as a mug shot loaded onto the monitor. "_Lightning Guy Bob_?"

Simmons was a minor player with the ability to generate lightning-shaped bolts of energy. He had caught Gren by surprise almost two years before, injuring him before Arsenal downed the rookie meta-villain with one of his custom-made arrows. The rematch, a year later, had gone badly for Bob. Gren had offhandedly finished him by bouncing him headfirst into the cold Montana ground.

Gren waved Lian back to her seat. "I can handle this one, ladies." He blew out a mouthful of air, annoyed at the prospect of such an uninspiring distraction.

"I'm going with you," said Lian. "I need a study break."

Meera sniggered. Gren gathered that Lian hadn't been studying for very long.

"Oh, be quiet," said Lian. "Where are we going?"

"Billings, Montana, right downtown," Meera replied. "North Broadway near 27th Street." She frowned at the screen and looked back at her teammates. "He seems to be making quite a mess."

* * *

Meera had apparently developed a talent for understatement, Gren thought, as he soared with Quiver over the small, modern city. Bob, it seemed, had come up with a few new talents himself. The first time they had seen him, he'd been dressed like an extra in a cheap biker movie. The prison coveralls he'd worn during their second encounter had done little to change that impression, but even from a distance, they could see that he'd recently assumed a new look.

His mousy brown hair was now a glittering yellow, shot through with fine pulsing streaks of electric blue and standing on end. It seemed almost alive, like a cluster of raging golden worms. He did not seem to be wearing anything but it was hard to tell: His body was enveloped in a cocoon of what appeared to be pure sunlight. It hurt to look at him. Gren's eyes flicked instinctively to the villain's feet: Bob no longer needed to straddle an electrical cloud to fly.

"Uh-oh," said Quiver, who was flying alongside Gren, propelled by a small, solid-light jetpack.

"He's still nothin'," said Gren, reassuring neither Quiver nor himself. He was fuming. Last December, Arsenal had asked the administrators at SuperMax to allow the League to investigate the possibility of prisoner experimentation at the facility. A handful of inmates, including Bob, had escaped shortly before Christmas, aided with what appeared to be greatly enhanced powers. SuperMax had been built to replace the old Belle Reve Penitentiary. It had been designed to hold meta-villains: The escape had raised some big questions.

The warden had refused Arsenal's request, insisting that the prison "could take care of its own" and promising to launch an internal investigation. His ass, Gren vowed, was the second one he would kick, just as soon as he took down Bob.

Their former nebbish of a nemesis had acquired enhanced powers to compliment his new look. Downtown Billings was in chaos: Bob had apparently drained away the city's electrical supply. Streetlights, air conditioners and neon signs were out. More disturbing to Gren was the sight of abandoned cars choking the intersection where Meera had pinpointed the attack. That suggested Bob had developed the ability to generate an electro-magnetic pulse.

He had also made the dubious graduation from felonious pest to murderer: There were bodies in the street Gren suspected would never move again. Quiver, cursing beside him, had come to the same conclusion.

"Careful," he told her as he dropped her on the roof of an immense pick-up truck. She nodded and reached for an arrow. Gren had barely lifted away from her when Bob spotted them.

"Give it up, Bob," Gren shouted, certain his standard warning would be as futile as it usually was. "It's too hot to fight."

"I like it hot," Bob thundered. Even his voice seemed to have an electrical tinge to it. "And my name – is – _Livewire_!"

"That name's taken," Quiver said, sounding shocked at the scope of the villain's ignorance.

"By a woman," added Gren, turning sideways to avoid a sizzling stream of electricity.

"Electro!" hollered Bob, apparently falling back on his second choice for a criminal code-name.

"That sounds familiar, too," Quiver said. She dove onto the street as Bob launched twin bolts of lightning at the pick-up truck, reducing it to a ruin of melting metal and plastic. Gren could smell the stench of burning leather seats as he moved higher into the air.

He flung a gradually enlarging ball of emerald light at the villain, planning to envelop Bob as soon as it got near him. But the electrically enhanced felon pointed at the sphere with an overdone flourish and the current he sent into the ball did something that had never happened to one of Gren's constructs before. It shimmered a bright green-gold and dissipated like a scattering cloud.

Without a second's hesitation, Gren sent his trademark mammoth hand after Bob, while Quiver fired an extinguisher arrow at him. Bob allowed the hand to envelop him as he sent yet another current to intercept the arrow, causing toxic fire-suppressing chemicals to rain over the red-headed archer. Then Bob grinned up at Gren and made the emerald fist disappear the way he had the globe of green light.

"Meera," Gren said grimly, hoping the telepath was tuning in to his signal. He gasped in pain as an electric projectile tore into his left shoulder. To his relief, she answered quickly. The Green Lantern transmitted a series of instructions and asked her a single question. Then he turned back to Lightning Bolt Bob, who had just sent a wavelike wall of electricity down Broadway, where it was quickly gaining on Quiver.

* * *

"Don't even think," Linda said through her teeth as she and Wally walked uneasily toward the Principal's Office. "Of being the fun dad. If you don't come down hard on Parker now, this will just be the beginning."

"We don't even know the whole story," Wally protested. Linda swung around and stood on her toes so they were practically nose-to-nose. "We know enough," she said.

The principal, a heavyset middle-aged African-American man shook hands with Wally and Linda and invited them into his office. Parker was sitting there, staring at the floor with a mixture of defiance and fear. A nervous young woman, presumably his teacher, sat beside him. Linda shot Parker a dirty look as she took a seat with her husband on the other side of the office. The principal urged everyone to pull their chairs closer to his desk. Everyone but Parker complied.

"Parker," Linda said, with ice in her voice. Without taking his eyes from the floor, Parker scooted his chair forward a few inches.

"I'm truly sorry to have to inconvenience you," said the principal, and it was obvious he was mostly addressing Wally. "It's close to the end of the school year and I did consider letting this go, but –"

"I'm glad you didn't, Mr. Griscomb," Linda said quickly. Wally's eyes darted at the name plate sitting at the front of the large oak desk. He guessed he should probably have known the name of his son's principal before mid-June.

The woman sitting next to Parker cleared her throat. "It's just that it was a final exam," she said meekly. "And, I have to be honest. There have been a few other – incidents – in past weeks."

"No there haven't," Parker muttered darkly. Linda shot him what their son Barry had once coined "the look of death" and he immediately returned his eyes to the tops of his scruffy, unlaced sneakers.

"Cheating," she said furiously. "One of _my_ children."

Wally put his hand over Linda's where she clenched the armrest of her chair. "Let's let Mr. –" He glanced again at the name plate. "Griscomb tell us what happened."

The principal looked uncomfortable. "Well. As you know, all of your children have attended this school and there have never been any problems before concerning their – exceptionalities." Wally found himself taking offense at the word. It sounded like his kids were members of what, in his less mature, more insensitive days, he would have referred to as "the basket-weaving class."

Parker mumbled something, the only audible part of which was "… what you know.…"

Ignoring him, Griscomb went on, "However, yesterday, during his English final, it looks like Parker may have approached Ms. Caulley's desk at – er – super-speed and copied down part of an answer to an essay question."

Wally's chest tightened. He looked at Parker questioningly.

"I didn't," Parker said fiercely. Wally felt himself relax. His son's response was too passionate, he believed, to be a lie.

No one else in the room seemed to be terribly moved, however. At the principal's nod, Ms. Caulley, her voice still trembling, said, "I would like to believe that – but – you see, my boyfriend –" Her face turned a bright pink. "His name is Eddie and the question on the final was about a story the children read earlier in the year, _A Cask of Amontillado_ by Edgar Allen Poe. In my notes, just as a joke to myself, I referred to the author as Eddie Poekins. And that's the name Parker used in his essay."

Wally looked over at his son, who was now smearing a tear away from his cheek. "Park," he said, his voice heavy with disappointment. He looked at Linda, who was gripping her chair in a mix of humiliation and anger. "We'll take care of this," he said.

Griscomb looked relieved. "Parker will receive a zero on the test, of course," he said. "But we could allow him to take a re-test –"

_Flash. _

"Oh, no," Wally said, covering his face with his hands.

"Dad," Parker said desperately. "I swear I won't do it again."

Wally let his head fall briefly back against the chair, and then he sighed and stood up. "It's just that I've got to go." He cringed inwardly as Linda grew rigid. "I'm sorry," he said, without looking at his wife. "Whatever you guys decide, I'm fully behind it."

As he shot toward Billings, listening to Meera describe Robert Simmons' attack on the city and their teammates, Wally tried to push away his feelings of disappointment in Parker and his frustration at having been interrupted at such an important time. He knew Linda would understand, once she'd cooled off, but he had managed to avoid allowing his Justice League obligations to interfere with his family life for months now. He knew Iris had her doubts about the half-time arrangement he'd been pushing, but he wished his adult daughter would overcome her reservations enough to give the League a try. She could have taken this call instead of him.

The Flash made it to Billings in a handful of minutes. By then, Meera had established a relay between him and Quiver. Lian guided Wally toward the edge of town, where she and Gren had managed to lure the villain Wally had once dubbed Lightning Guy. He didn't like the way Quiver described the fugitive's make-over.

* * *

Gren had not been able to block the tsunami of electric energy Bob had sent after Quiver, but he had managed to scoop her up before it hit her. Bob wasn't facile enough with his enhanced power to compensate for the direction change, but he regrouped quickly enough to hurl a few sizzling projectiles at the fleeing crimefighters.

A smart criminal would have taken the opportunity to escape, but – give or take a handful of mad geniuses – "smart criminal" was an oxymoron. Bob bore a grudge against the Green Lantern for having dispatched him so quickly and contemptuously the previous year – and he had a score to settle against Quiver's father for having sent him to SuperMax in the first place. He rocketed impulsively after them, without stopping to recognize that superheroes usually didn't run away.

_Whew_, thought the Flash as he caught sight of the new and improved Lighting Guy. He ran parallel to his flying teammate – who was still carrying Quiver – as they led their revenge-hungry adversary across the city limit. The Green Lantern dipped low for a second and Quiver dropped gracefully to the ground. Wally was running so fast he had to loop back around to join her.

"Listen," she said, and told him the plan. Wally nodded and sped after Gren, who was dodging a barrage of energy bolts as he wove across the sky. The Green Lantern summoned a huge, razor-like disk – a humongous throwing star – but he was so winded and wounded that he misaimed, wildly missing his pursuer and instead shearing off the top of a water tower.

The miss appeared to take all of the fight out of Gren, who hovered over the tower, panting as he clutched at his burned shoulder. Bob, smelling blood, went in for the kill.

In his single-minded quest to destroy the man who humiliated him, Bob failed to see the blur of the Flash running up the side of the water tower, nor did he spot the Scarlet Speedster zooming around the mouth of the tower where Gren had ripped it open. He did notice the Green Lantern's expression curiously change from agony to amused contempt, but Bob had little time to contemplate this change in demeanor. He was being sucked suddenly downward, and when he looked beneath him, his face filled with horror.

The Flash hurtled even faster around the rim of the tank, strengthening the force of the vortex he was creating. He took some satisfaction in Lightning Guy's panicked thrashing as he drew closer to the water, but Wally had seen the bodies crumpled in the streets of Billings and the gruesome burn on his teammate's shoulder. He could think of a dozen jokes to accompany the sizzle Simmons made when he plunged into the million-gallon tank, but he spoke not a single one aloud.

"Back to plain old Bob," said Gren a few moments later, as he fished the naked, mousy-haired convict from the tank, scooping him up in an oversized green net that reminded Wally of the ones he had used to remove dead goldfish from his children's aquarium.

"Good idea to lead him to the tank," the Flash told Gren, as Quiver checked the felon for a pulse and resentfully announced that he still had one.

"It was Lian's idea," Gren said. "Celibacy has turned her into a military genius."

* * *

It was just a small riot, but as Arkham continued to lose guards, they had become more frequent. The asylum was chronically short-staffed. Since Lawrence Adrienne had assumed the directorship, three security officers had resigned, citing in exit interviews their belief that changes in administration policy had made their jobs more dangerous. The director had these comments expunged, wrote off his former employees as malcontents and replaced them with a single rookie who, despite earnest efforts, lasted three days before quitting in terror after a confrontation with a prisoner named Michael Hartrampf left the newbie with a broken jaw and sixteen stitches in his partially detached ear.

Adrienne had been forced to call the Gotham police to assist with this last riot. It had not ballooned so far out of control that Martha felt the need to contact Batman, though she did surreptitiously use her own powers to nullify a few of the more savage escapees. She did this quickly enough for her actions to be invisible. In less than three hours, the asylum was more or less quiet again.

The director called a quick meeting of staff – both psychiatric and security – once he'd thanked an irritated Lakeeta Reardon for the use of her officers. Martha noted that her colleagues, several of whom pressed ice packs against bruised body parts, seemed to expect nothing more than she did from this meeting, which had become a routine post-calamity ritual at Adrienne's Arkham.

Anticipating another repetitive pep talk, Martha had brought a few patient files along with her to the meeting. She was not the only doctor to have done this. No one could afford to waste time listening to Adrienne's insubstantial sermons with the sort of patient load that was bearing down on each of them. It was Martha's absorbed scribbling into a patient file, however, that caught Adrienne's eye.

"Am I wasting your time, Dr. Kent?" he asked brusquely.

Martha closed the file and straightened in her chair. "Sorry, sir."

Adrienne prattled on for another fifteen minutes, during which Martha tried to appear intensely interested in his prosaic ramblings. Finally, he asked if anyone had anything to say. No one was foolish enough to respond to this question; by this time, everyone knew it was rhetorical. As the meeting broke up and people started to move toward the door, Adrienne's voice sounded again over the clatter.

"Dr. Kent. I need to see you in my office."

Several of her colleagues glanced sympathetically toward Martha as she nervously followed Adrienne out of the room. He did not so much as look back to see if she was behind him until they walked past his secretary and into his office, where he nodded at her to close the door.

"I'm sorry about the meeting," Martha said as she obeyed a second nod, this time directing her to the chair in front of Adrienne's desk. "I'm just kind of backed up –"

Adrienne held up a hand. "I have more important concerns to discuss with you, Dr. Kent." He picked up a file folder and Martha could see a pink disciplinary slip beneath it. She stiffened. Adrienne had written her up a week ago, for meeting with Harvey in her basement office. This would be her second official warning.

"I think we've had a discussion about professional conduct before," he said.

So he'd found out about her clandestine session with Harvey. Martha wondered if there had been a hidden camera in the room. She was sure no one had seen them.

As she struggled to think of an acceptable reason for defying Adrienne's orders, the director said, "Melinda Biggs, in the woman's wing."

"Yes, sir?" asked Martha. Her relief at not having been caught with Harvey was overshadowed by her confusion at this reference to one of her less remarkable patients.

"She's in here for what?" Adrienne asked, an ominous question considering that Martha could see Biggs' file lying on his desk.

"Setting fire to a preschool. And a nursing home. And a fire station," Martha said. "Something like fifteen years ago." Batman, along with city firefighters had rescued all of Biggs' intended victims. It was Lakeeta Reardon, at the time an arson detective, who had put the cuffs on Biggs.

"And what is the theme of the song, _Sunny Came Home_?"

"Oh," said Martha uncomfortably. "It's about a pyromaniac."

"And singing _Sunny Came Home_ with a pyromaniac is therapeutic how?" Adrienne asked in a tone better suited to a district attorney than a psychiatrist.

Martha took a deep breath. "I study my patients very carefully. Melinda's got a weird sense of humor," she said. "I was trying to make a connection with her. And it worked. She's talked more to me –"

Adrienne cut her off. "You're supposed to be treating these patients, not bonding with them." He handed her the pink slip. "Your second reprimand for unprofessional behavior."

Martha stared in disbelief at the surface of Adrienne's desk. Another sheet of pink paper lay beneath the first one.

The director shook the first slip at her until she numbly took it, then picked up the second form and squinted at her. "This one comes a little late," he said, and Martha could hear the undertone of triumph in his voice. "I was testifying before the state yesterday and then we had the riot today. But I have to tell you, Dr. Kent. I never thought I'd have to issue a reprimand to a professional for anything like this."

Three pink slips meant an automatic hearing for her dismissal. Martha struggled to keep her voice steady as she asked hoarsely, "For what?"

"The Arkham parking lot is still hospital property," he said, and despite her panic, Martha could see that he was suppressing a leer. "It's not the place for you to be making out with your boyfriend."

"_What?_ What are you _talking _about?" That fucking Trellis. He must have told Adrienne about the kiss he had witnessed in the parking lot. And exaggerated. A lot. "If Jesse Trellis –"

"Keep your voice down," Adrienne snapped. "Your behavior is no one's responsibility but your own. And that of the young man in question, but he doesn't work here."

Martha realized immediately that the director had no idea whom she'd been kissing. Arkham could not survive without the deficit funding provided by the Wayne Foundation. All she would have to do was say, "Fine. I'll tell Bruce he can't kiss me in the parking lot anymore." It wouldn't take Adrienne long to figure out who "Bruce" was and for those pink slips to be wadded up in the bottom of his recycling bin.

But Martha would not do this; it felt too much like using Bruce. The idea of throwing his name around to solve one of her problems was unthinkable to her. She would come up with a way to fight this on her own.

"Dr. Adrienne." Martha leaned forward and strained to keep her voice steady. "I have worked extremely hard, all of my life, to get to where I am today. I have never intentionally behaved unprofessionally, nor has my dedication to my job or my work ethic ever been questioned before. I'm not sure what I have to do to –"

Adrienne cut her off. "What you have to do now," he said. "Is get out of my office. There will be a formal hearing for your dismissal next week. Until then, I'm sure someone as dedicated and hardworking as yourself will want to get your files in order in the event that someone else has to take them over."

Martha found herself unable to move. She stared unbelievingly at Adrienne until the director walked around his desk. He dropped the second reprimand on her lap and repeated softly, "Get out of here, Dr. Kent."

* * *

Roy grudgingly untangled himself from Midori and groped around the hotel room floor for his trousers, extracting his cell phone seconds before the call from his daughter was routed to his voice mail.

"Hi," he said groggily, as Midori sleepily slipped her arms back around him.

"It's dinnertime," Lian said. "Why are you sleeping?"

"I'm not sleeping," Roy said. "I'm doing productive things that are greatly contributing the world's security." Midori looked at him curiously, decided he was joking and snuggled back against him with a smile.

"Right," said Lian, and told her father about the encounter with Lightning Guy Bob.

Roy cursed, causing Midori to scrutinize him again. "We're investigating SuperMax ourselves whether the warden likes it or not. I want you and Wally on it."

There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the line. "OK."

"Anything else going on?" Roy asked.

"Not really," Lian said. "Other than the fact that I no longer seem to have a roommate."

Roy chuckled. "As long as she doesn't get him so mellow he doesn't want to hit people."

"He'll never be that mellow," Lian said, adding, "I've got a meeting to go to."

"I love you," Roy said warmly. He flipped his phone closed and turned to Midori.

"Would you like room service?" He lowered his voice suggestively. "Or would you rather I serviced you in this room?"

Midori understood this joke; Roy had told it several times before.

"Both," she said, seeing no reason to choose. Roy would be heading back to Colorado tomorrow while Midori continued to supervise the construction of the _Javelin-13_. She intended to exploit her second option while it was still available to her.

He reached onto his nightstand for the hotel menu. "Greedy," he said. "You're lucky I like to spoil you."

* * *

Martha managed to make it through the rest of the day with a stoic smile. She didn't allow herself the luxury of tears until she was home, standing under a scalding shower. Termination from a fellowship – especially at a place like Arkham, where they were desperate for doctors and never released them – would follow her like a shadow for the rest of her career. Her credibility would be ruined; the authenticity of her research questioned.

And she had never been fired before. Her personnel files had always been thick with outstanding reviews and commendations. Her professional success had occasionally made co-workers dislike her, but never her bosses. She did not understand why Adrienne hated her. She had not left work on Justice League business once since returning to the asylum.

Martha had been looking forward to another evening with Bruce; now she considered canceling. She knew better than to think she could hide anything from him and it was too early in their relationship, she decided, to dump something this heavy on him. She leaned her head against the opaque shower door and sighed. Bruce had had come back from last night's patrol with a head full of ideas. He had said something about spending the afternoon outlining some new strategies so she could look them over before tonight's operation. His face didn't show it, but Martha could tell he had been excited. She couldn't disappoint him.

She would be a good actress this time, Martha resolved as she stepped into a new pair of jeans. Adrienne might have ruined her day, but she wouldn't let him ruin Bruce's night.

* * *

It took Bruce an instant to realize something was wrong with Martha and thirty seconds to get her to tell him what it was. She did keep the contents of the second pink slip from him, but only by telling Bruce she did not want to talk about it.

"You'll just get upset," she said, snuffling into his shirt.

He was already beyond upset. He had met men like Adrienne before: self-righteously mean and abusive when they got a little power. Bruce hand-picked the top executives at his own companies. They had standing orders to fire managers who tormented their subordinates.

As he sat on his couch and held Martha, Bruce forced away scenarios in which Batman hung Adrienne from the top of Arkham's highest tower and locked him into a cell with the inmate whose cannibalistic tendencies had chased away the previous director. His job, Bruce reminded himself, was to listen to Martha's problem, not fix it. To his surprise, this simple thing really did seem to make her feel better; he could sense it in the slight sagging of her shoulders as leaned against his chest.

In a gesture that Martha later confessed meant more to her than anything else he did to comfort her that night, Bruce asked if she wanted to skip their patrol; they could stay in if she wanted.

"No," she said, wiping her eyes. "I want to hit bad people tonight."

* * *

Linda had not seen what Parker had done to deserve re-taking his English final. In addition to cheating, he had lied repeatedly to protect himself. She thanked the principal for his generosity and told the English teacher to give her son a zero.

"But I'll fail English," Parker had protested, fresh tears tumbling down his cheeks. "I'll have to go to summer school."

"Then you'll go to summer school," his mother replied.

Apparently hoping Wally would intervene, Parker had recounted the conversation to his father as they stood on their porch that evening, watching the sun fall behind a cluster of maple trees. His version omitted the transparent sorrow on Linda's face as she consigned her son to a joyless summer, instead painting her as a cold disciplinarian whose unreasonable stance had shocked the principal and Parker's English teacher.

He wouldn't have fooled Wally even if he hadn't called the school later that day to apologize for leaving the meeting. Mr. Griscomb asked him to relay his thanks to Linda, adding that it was rare these days for a parent to insist that her child face the full consequences of his actions. Her stance was particularly important for a young man like Parker, whose life would almost certainly involve making more than the average number of moral choices.

Wally was gently defending Linda's decision to their son when she pushed open the sliding glass door and handed her husband his cell phone.

It was Lian. Wally instinctively walked into the middle of the yard so that Parker would neither hear the conversation nor notice his father's discomfort.

"Arsenal wants us to look into what's going on at SuperMax," Lian told him.

"Who's 'us'?" Wally asked cautiously.

"You and me," Lian said. He could tell from her voice that she was expecting him to try to worm out of the assignment and she wasn't wrong. He held the phone silently against his ear, searching for an excuse to avoid working alone with the young woman who had once spent months determined to seduce him.

"Wally," said Lian, and he was surprised to hear pain in her voice. "It'll be OK. I'm – I'm not like that anymore."

He hoped he could believe her. Four weeks of recovery wasn't exactly a record. Wally was no longer tempted by his teammate, but he wasn't one to walk willingly into such an awkward situation.

"All right," he said finally. "I'll give you a call tomorrow so we can set a time to meet up with the warden."

He flipped closed the phone and walked back toward Parker, who had new woes to share about _A Cask of Amontillado_. "No one understood it," he said. "It had Latin in it and stuff."

"Life's hard," Wally told him. "And a lot of it is tough to understand. But cheating only makes it worse."

Parker looked disgusted at him for stringing together the chain of clichés, but Wally could see relief in the back of his son's chestnut eyes. Linda had been right; Parker hadn't needed the fun dad. Feeling a little more like a grown-up than usual, Wally gave his son's shoulders an encouraging squeeze and was gratified when Parker didn't shrug him off.

* * *

Lawrence Adrienne didn't believe himself a vain man, or a manipulative one, but he did pride himself on being able to handle people. He could work the heavy-hitter as well as the little guy, Adrienne thought as he reached across his desk to shake hands with Bruce Wayne.

The billionaire had wandered into the director's office half an hour earlier, just as the Adrienne was preparing to go out to lunch. Apparently Wayne had heard something on the radio about the director's testimony before the state senate's budgetary committee. He looked a bit run down – Adrienne guessed he was hung over – but was affable and easily steered toward the subject of funding. The socialite's attention seemed to wander during the course of the conversation, his eyes falling on the many plaques and diplomas Adrienne had mounted on his office walls. It was a good thing the guy had inherited his money, the director thought. He doubted Wayne had the focus to make a dime on his own.

Adrienne could not remember his successor, Dev Persky, being able to squeeze an extra penny out of the billionaire, but it had not taken much today to convince him to make up for any deficit caused by a cut in state funding. It was all a matter of how you handled people, Adrienne thought, congratulating himself as _Wayne_ thanked _him_ for the meeting. You needed to maintain your own sense of authority; you needed to let them know who was in charge.

"So you'll give me a call when the budget report comes in?" Wayne asked. "I'll need to get a crew working on the supplement. You know," he shrugged carelessly. "Accountants."

"Of course," said Adrienne, completely unaware of the condescension in his voice that had become almost a default tone. "And thanks again, Mr. Wayne."

Wayne waved off his thanks and headed toward the door, where he suddenly stopped and turned back, as if he'd forgotten something.

"You don't mind if I take my girlfriend to lunch, do you?" he asked offhandedly.

The director shot him an inquiring look. "Your girlfriend?"

"She's on your staff," Bruce told him. "Martha Kent."

Adrienne froze. "She... um... I mean, of course. She's never mentioned that you...," he faltered.

"That's funny," said Bruce, and his eyes, suddenly hard and ice-cold, seemed to belong to someone else. "She's mentioned the hell out of you."

* * *

Martha had signed into Arkham that morning determined to get through the day as if it were any other. She saw patients, updated files and did whatever she could to avoid Adrienne. Not unusually, she became so absorbed in her work that she forgot about lunch. When a long shadow crossed her desk a few minutes after noon, she glanced up from her computer screen and found herself happily surprised.

"What are you doing here?" she asked Bruce.

"I'm taking you to lunch," he said. "Then I'm helping you move back into your old office."

As Martha stared at him incredulously, he added. "I fixed your problem. Sorry."

What she did to him then could have definitely earned her another pink slip.

* * *

It had been a satisfying patrol, thought Batman as he stepped out of the car and pushed back his mask. There had been a nice pace to the night – not too busy, not too slow – with a lot of room for trying out a few new tactics as well as honing some old standbys. Superwoman had been a bit more exuberant that she'd needed to be – lashing a carjacker to the pinnacle of a Ferris wheel that had been erected for the city's upcoming Independence Day carnival – but her ebullience had been a pleasing change from her desolate demeanor of the night before, when Bruce had spent hours worrying about how Martha would react if he did more than just listen to her problems.

He looked up as she flew into the cave, switching off the hologram as she landed next to him.

"Hey," she said, kissing his sweaty cheek. "A good night."

"It was," he said. "Let's take a shower and we'll debrief over breakfast."

But suddenly, Martha was no longer standing next to him. Bruce heard her clear her throat and looked back to see her sitting on the hood of the Batmobile.

"Not quite yet," she said. He frowned at her curiously.

"We have some unfinished business with this car," Martha said, her mischievous eyes belying the seriousness of her tone.

Bruce knew what she meant right away. Months ago, they had almost…. And now she wanted to….

"Alfred's usually down here around now," he started, taking a few intrigued steps toward her. "He might –"

Martha shook her head. "No," she said. "I believe he's sleeping in today."

Bruce shook his head, grinning as he quickly closed the gap between them.

"You're a bad girl," he murmured, taking her face in his hands.

"Practically a supervillian," Martha whispered as his mouth came down on hers.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Bad Science_

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

Heroically beta-read by arg914

* * *

… _their dead eyes… fixed, bloodshot, staring… soon, soon, not going anywhere, he was still here, not going away, not until they were cold and broken, all of them, his triumph the final memory haunting their dead eyes._

_He was still here._

* * *

"I hope it's not the government," said Wally as he thumbed back the wrapper from his second barbecued buffalo cheeseburger. "I hate it when it's the government."

Lian eyed his sauce-stained fingers with distaste and picked at her salad. "It would be nice to factor out Cadmus." A crouton toppled onto the faded blue tablecloth from her overstuffed bowl. "I know how Superman feels about them, but I think they play too much."

It had been nearly three weeks since Arsenal had assigned them to investigate the break-outs at SuperMax, but they were just getting to it. A mammoth earthquake in Kyoto, an extraterrestrial invasion attempt, two unrelated efforts to take over the world and a resistant warden had conspired to delay the inquiry. It had taken Lian's threat of a court order to eliminate the final stumbling block: The warden, exhausted from repeated attempts to explain Lightning Guy Bob's murderous flight from a prison that was supposed to be escape-proof, did not think his career could weather the bad publicity that might arise from a high-profile legal battle with the Justice League.

While he could not explain the disturbing changes in some of his prisoners, the warden had a point in insisting that the opportunity for experimentation on inmates simply didn't exist, admitted Wally. Prisoners lived in solitary confinement. A pneumatic delivery system made escape during mealtimes impossible. Despite the vigorous protests of prison reform activists, there was no yard time. Affording super-powered convicts the right to exercise was generally held to be a bad idea. None of inmates needed to be any stronger than they already were.

"We'll get a better picture once we're inside," Lian said, examining the fallen crouton between her thumb and forefinger before popping it into her mouth. She pulled out a sheaf of papers and donned her new glasses. "There were six original escapees last December: Butri Chatichai – the telekinetic who almost killed –"

Wally waved her into silence. Chatichai had almost killed Superwoman. That information was better left unspoken, even in a near-deserted barbecue shack.

Lian winced apologetically and continued, "So – Chatichai, and also Plasmus, Pillan, Cheetah, Chemo and Bob, who was still Lighting Guy 1.0 at the time and not the murderous upgrade we fought in Billings."

"But not all of them seemed altered, even back then," Wally said thoughtfully. He squinted across the Montana highway through the barbecue joint's dusty plate glass window and wondered if Lian's bespectacled, unadorned look was an attempt to reassure him of her wholesome intent.

"No," Lian said. "Just Pillan and Chatichai."

"Not the old guys," Wally said. Lian gave him a sharp, startled look.

"Yeah," she said eagerly. She rifled through the stack of papers until she found a spreadsheet with several rows highlighted in bright pink. "Bob is 26." She scanned the sheet quickly. "The other two are under 35."

He shrugged. "Could be a coincidence." He looked at his watch. "We should probably change into our dancing clothes. Don't want to keep the warden waiting."

The warden was unimpressed with their punctuality. He resented the intrusion of the two costumed outsiders; in his view, their presence alone made him look bad. He made a weak attempt to limit the scope of their investigation, an endeavor that ended when Quiver handed him one of Lois Lane's business cards.

"My roommate's mother," Lian said matter-of-factly. The warden hastily poked at his intercom and asked the corrections officer who appeared moments later to take them wherever they wanted.

* * *

Batman's black gloved fingers moved methodically over the monitor, touching a pictured quadrant, allowing the image to balloon onto the screen, then moving on to another with a regularity that was almost rhythmic. Arsenal had been standing behind him for almost a full minute, watching with amused admiration as his colleague systematically surveyed the hundreds of satellite images from Eastern Europe and then, without so much as a pause to acknowledge the geographical shift, moved on to Asia.

He did not bother to greet Roy, who took no offense. A social relationship with Bruce Wayne did not translate into an exchange of pleasantries with an on-duty Batman.

"Have you seen her?" Roy asked, unable to keep the adolescent reverence out of his voice.

"No," Batman said, without taking his eyes from the screen. He magnified a live photo of what looked to Roy like Southern India, then touched the monitor again.

"Well, come see her now," Roy said.

Batman gave a final glance at the screen and turned in his chair to face his teammate.

"Monitor duty." He turned back toward the screen.

"It'll take a second. What, you wouldn't leave for a minute to go to the bathroom?"

"No," Batman said, frowning at a province in northwest India that included a distant glimpse of the Taj Mahal.

As Arsenal frolicked through a bold assortment of flippant replies, he heard shuffling outside of the control room and stuck his head into the hallway. "Hey, Gren. Come here for a second."

The Green Lantern slouched through the door. "Yeah."

"Watch the monitor for a minute, will you?" Roy asked. "C'mon," he added to Batman, who rose without removing his eyes from the screen.

Gren made an exasperated noise, but took a few steps toward the monitor. Batman nodded his thanks and followed Arsenal out of the control room.

"What's wrong with Gardner?" he asked, as they walked toward the rear of building.

Roy shook his head. "Ah, don't worry about it." He stopped a few feet in front of the automatic doors, grinned enthusiastically at Batman and motioned him forward. They stepped into the sticky late-July air and gazed out at the flight deck.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Arsenal asked as the two men looked down at the newly arrived _Javelin-13._ The shuttle, lustrous in the afternoon sun, lay low against the flight deck, sleek, streamlined, and strikingly powerful. Midori had outdone herself.

"Yes," said Batman. His face remained expressionless, but he shifted slightly and Roy could tell his taciturn teammate was impressed.

"Midori says she's got an even better vision for the _14_," Roy said. "But I was thinking it might not be bad to go into production now on a back-up for this baby." The questioning look he aimed at Batman was intended more for his billionaire alter-ego. Wayne Enterprises was known as a key financial supporter of the League and Bruce contributed additional monies through an untraceable matrix of ghost organizations.

"Sure," Batman said. He stared appreciatively at the shuttle as Roy rattled off an impressive list of its capabilities. Midori poked her head out from a hatch on the shuttle's belly and waved.

"Some guy's girlfriends bake them cookies," Roy said proudly.

"You've traded up," Batman said.

Roy gave him a cautious glance. "I think you and I have both gotten pretty lucky."

Batman was silent for a moment. "Yeah," he said, his voice the barest bit lighter. He shifted again. "I've got to get back to the monitor."

"Gren," Arsenal asked a few minutes later, as they left Batman in the control room and headed toward the gym. "Ever take a bathroom break when you're on monitor duty?"

"Sure," Gren said, as if this were obvious. "I just take a handheld with me."

"_Into_ the bathroom?" Roy asked, scowling in distaste.

The Green Lantern shrugged. "I only need one hand in there."

Roy made a note to disinfect and lock the drawer full of handheld monitors and to ask Midori to install a flatscreen onto the bathroom wall. "I'll be right back. If I'm gonna work out with you, I've got to get some latex gloves."

Gren laughed. "Squeamish."

* * *

As the Flash and Quiver worked their way through SuperMax, questioning largely cooperative staff and predictably resistant prisoners, they began to see the warden's point.

No one seemed to have noticed anything unusual during the time preceding either breakout episode, nor had anybody observed any changes in the abilities of the meta-villain population.

"But we probably wouldn't," a corrections officer named Mason told them. He had been assigned to escort the duo of superheroes and appeared eager to help. "We don't give them a chance to use their powers, so it would have been hard to tell if they were getting stronger."

"So what kind of investigation did you guys do?" Quiver asked irritably. "Did the medical staff do tests or –"

Mason looked embarrassed. "I don't know. I wasn't a part of it."

Before Lian's contemptuous expression translated into biting words for an innocent man, the Flash said quickly, "I'll bet if you had been, things would have gone better."

Quiver caught herself and smiled at Mason, who looked instantly grateful for her change in mood. "So, we're absolutely sure that the only thing that goes into those cells is food?"

The guard nodded. "And we can track how many times the meal slots are opened," he said. "They're monitored by a computer."

"And everyone gets the same food?" Wally asked, politely resisting the urge to describe out how easily computer data could be changed.

Mason nodded. "Except a couple of the prisoners who have special dietary needs. Like they have diabetes or some kind of religious restrictions."

Quiver dug a roster of prisoners out from the pile of papers she'd been carrying and handed it to Mason. "Would that include anyone on this list?"

* * *

Tuksin Techapongvorachai, whose nom de crime was DevilDog, had a better reason than most prisoners to resent the intrusion into his involuntarily cloistered life by members of the Justice League. Until his defeat at the hands of Superwoman almost two years earlier, the super-powered Thai had been making a literal killing as a million-dollar assassin. He hadn't seen natural sunlight since the bright December day when he, his telekinetic girlfriend Chatichai and Bob Simmons had been tossed into SuperMax after a failed attempt to murder a team of scientists. Both Chatichai and Bob had since been transformed into something more than they had previously been. DevilDog, a flyer who was as strong as Superwoman and almost as fast, had not participated in either escape attempt, something he would surely have done, had he been capable.

Despite the unpleasantness of their last encounter, DevilDog seemed pleased to see them. After 19 months of solitary confinement, Wally figured, the inmate would probably have been glad to see anybody.

"Hey, where's my blondie?" DevilDog asked, grinning at them through a two-way television monitor that was built into the door of his cell. His lust for Superwoman – in her voluptuous holographic form – was common knowledge among her teammates. It didn't endear him to Martha, whose relationship with her Amazonian doppelganger was somewhat ambivalent.

"She sends her love," Quiver said. "And asks that you answer a few questions."

DevilDog shrugged. "Sure. I got nothing better to do."

"You stronger than when you got here?" Wally asked.

The assassin gave him a startled look and held out his arms, revealing a torso that was considerably paler and thinner than it had been the last time they had seen him. "I don't think I could throw a truck more than block," he said disgustedly.

"Well, that's a tragedy," Quiver muttered to the Flash, who smiled and said, "Your girlfriend can't say the same,"

DevilDog grinned again. "Yeah, I hear about that from the guards. She try to break me out, huh? But she can't beat blondie neither."

"What do you think happened to her?" Quiver asked. "And your buddy, Bob?"

Shrugging, DevilDog said, "Don't know. Wish it would happen to me."

A squeaking noise behind them caused the Flash and Quiver to spin around quickly. A guard was sliding lunch trays through the pneumatic meal slots.

The Flash took the guard's arm before he could slide the tray into DevilDog's cell. Lian frowned over the tepid slab of tofu and asked, "What are those pills?"

"Vitamins," the guard said. At Quiver's nod, he opened a small door in the cell wall, slid the tray into a notch, sealed the door and pushed a button. There was a hissing noise and the meal disappeared.

They watched DevilDog reach disdainfully for the tray, which had reappeared on his side of the door.

"You know how good I used to eat?" he asked.

"Guess there's not a lot of vegetarian options in prison," Quiver said.

"Nah." DevilDog, glaring at a soft, round vitamin capsule as it rolled across the tray.

Quiver looked at the Flash. "Anything else?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "Be seeing you, Tuksin," he said.

"You tell Superwoman I'm thinking of her," DevilDog said.

"No message for your girlfriend?" Wally asked. "The one who got recaptured trying to spring you?"

DevilDog shrugged. "It not like I'm engaged to her."

* * *

After an inspection of the kitchen and its staff – "You grilled the cook," Wally teased Lian – Mason led them to the pharmacy, where a cordial, middle-aged woman readily opened her records and inventory for their inspection.

"You dispense the vitamins?" Quiver asked her, running her manicured fingernail across an old-fashioned paper ledger.

"I get them together every morning," the woman said. "So the kitchen assistants can hand them out during the noontime meal."

The Flash looked up from the pharmacy computer, where he was reading over a spreadsheet. "Everyone gets the same thing?"

She nodded. "Pretty much."

"Well, the older prisoners," Mason said slowly. "Their pills look different." Quiver and the Flash exchanged a glance.

"The pharmacist smiled. "Same ingredients. They get a 40-plus formula."

Wally straightened from where he had been bent over the keyboard. "You mind if we take a few samples with us? Ms. –?"

"Yorkin," she said. "Terianne. Just tell me what you want. I'll get it together for you."

"Maybe it's something in the lighting?" Lian asked, as the pneumatic doors hissed and they stepped out into the sunlight. "Some kind of rays coming from the bulbs?"

Wally held up a finger, disappeared for no more than a second, and returned, holding a light bulb and wearing his street clothes. Lian had changed in the prison bathroom; Wally wanted to revisit the barbecue joint without attracting too many stares.

"It looks like an ordinary bulb," he said, inspecting it. "But you never know."

"I think it's the food, though," Lian said, as they continued walking toward the mammoth gates. "What else goes into their bodies? It can't be anything in the air, or the effect would be uncontrolled. And the food would explain why DevilDog wasn't affected."

Wally shrugged. "The person who's doing this may not want him to be affected. He's a loose cannon. Maybe the others are more suggestible. Anyway," he added, "You saw how little cooking is actually done in there. Most of the food comes right off the truck and into the freezer, where it sits until it's time for the microwave." He watched Lian rummage in her briefcase for her clear-lens glasses. Suddenly, her eyes widened she grabbed Wally's arm.

"It's the vitamins," she said excitedly.

"How can you –"

"All of the older prisoners get tablets," she said. "But the younger ones – two of the four pills they get are softgels."

"So?" asked Wally. "Tuksin gets the softgels, but he –"

"_Doesn't take them_," Lian said. "They've got gelatin in them – that's a meat byproduct. A real vegetarian wouldn't touch them."

"How do you know?" Wally asked, impressed.

"My roommate," Lian said simply. "She once gave me a lecture on my vitamin supply."

Wally gave Lian a long, fond look. "Why are you wearing those glasses?" he asked.

"Oh." Lian blushed. "I thought they would make me look smarter – and that people might take me more seriously."

"You don't need them," Wally said. He reached over and gently wiggled the glasses from the bridge of her nose. "You're smart as hell. And people better take you seriously."

Lian's uncertain smile was met by Wally's reassuring one, and without a word, everything became right between them. The tension born of a haunting mistake in judgment melted into the bright Montana afternoon.

"I have my Uncle Wally back?" Lian asked, trying not to cry.

He would have said yes and might even have hugged her, but the explosion that threw them both against the gates of the prison cut short their deeply needed reconciliation.

"Uh-oh," Lian said, looking upward as she threw up an arm to shield herself from the shower of concrete and asphalt that rained onto them from the penitentiary roof.

Wally rubbed his head and pulled himself into a sitting position as his eyes sought the source of the explosion. Six super-powered bodies had just lifted into the sky.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Seven supervillains and a baby_

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

Mega-gratitude to arg914, beta-reader extraordinaire, and my technical advisor, The Five Foot Ninja.

* * *

Sweat plastered Roy's hair against his dripping forehead as he danced inside the fading yellow ring in the center of the gymnastics mat. He dodged Gren's backfist easily enough, but had to block a right hook to his ribs before answering with a lightly delivered knee to his teammate's thigh.

He would not pant, Roy told himself as he determinedly reigned in his burning lungs. Not in front of Gren. There would be no old man jokes from the Green Lantern today.

Chewing on his mouthpiece, Gren shuffled back slightly, nodded to Roy in acknowledgement of the blow, and shifted from side to side in what was not quite a bounce, his trained eyes searching for an opening. Roy was gratified to see sweat rolling into the stubble around his lanky teammate's jaw.

He watched in approval as Gren's eyes narrowed, a give-away – to Roy at least – that the younger man was timing him, waiting for the slightest change in the way Roy shifted his weight as he bounced buoyantly on his toes. Gren would strike at the tiniest change in balance, a trick he had learned years ago – from Roy – not long after hooking up with the League. Now he used it against his teacher with regularity.

Roy obliged, intentionally allowing his rear foot to linger on the mat a second more than he should have, breaking his rhythm and enticing Gren to lunge forward with another backfist. The Lantern's fist hit air; Roy had dropped to the mat and was arcing his left leg around in a powerful broom sweep. Gren barely managed to save himself, hopping over Roy's onrushing shin, while countering with an axe kick to his teammate's chest.

They never learned whether the strike would have landed; the monitor's grating alarm jerked them apart like an angry referee and then Batman's terse voice was booming over the intercom.

"Mass breakout at SuperMax. Get to the shuttle." He did not have to add "now." His teammates knew they were already late.

* * *

So much for another buffalo cheeseburger, thought Wally, shielding his eyes against the blinding light and falling debris. The supercharged escapees had taken refuge in the glare of the swollen summer sun; Wally could barely see them. Black spots started to form behind his eyes, forcing him to look away. He blinked hard to clear his vision and saw that Lian was all right and halfway to her feet.

"I've called Meera," she said, sweeping debris from her hair with an open hand. "But I didn't bring anything with me." By "anything," she meant her quiver of arrows and other weapons. Wally had changed back into his Flash suit before she finished her sentence and was following the cluster of supervillains with his eyes. Three of them were flyers – the others were catching rides.

Lian used a word the Flash more commonly heard from Gren. "One of them's Chatichai. What the hell's she doing?" she added.

The Flash made an exasperated sound. The telekinetic super-criminal was headed back into SuperMax.

"My _God_," Lian said in disbelief. "Tuksin can't be _that_ wonderful."

The Flash bolted through the prison, arriving at DevilDog's cell long seconds before Chatichai, but a glare from the telekinetic Thai sent the speedster soaring into a wall. His skull hit the reinforced cinderblock with a crack and before Wally could clear his head, she had ripped open the cell door with a glance and was leading her lover down the chaos-filled penitentiary hallways. By the time the Flash had rejoined Lian, the couple was airborne and their cronies had disappeared.

"They went west," she said, as they watched DevilDog wrap an arm around Chatichai's waist in order to hasten their escape. A chunk of concrete the telekinetic had been riding crashed to the ground just outside the gate.

"I'll follow them," the Flash said. "Find the pharmacist. She wasn't there when I ran past her station. And…" He shook his head. "Her name…. I think I've heard it before."

Lian nodded and spun back toward the prison as the Flash barreled after the flying fugitives. None of them were as fast as he was; inside a minute, he had them in sight. He just hoped they weren't heading where he thought they were heading.

* * *

Arsenal's tunic stuck to his sweaty torso as he pulled the clingy material down over his ribs and looked around the airborne shuttle. Midori sat in the pilot's seat, her face pale mint with worry. She had hoped to run another week's worth of tests before declaring the new _Javelin _operational. Roy knew better. The only real tests took place in battle.

He watched Batman speak quietly into his left wrist as he tracked the newly-formed gang of meta-villains on the shuttle's monitor. Gren had rocketed ahead of them and was close to joining the Flash. Meera, who had been counseling a patient in her Montreal office, was preparing to operate at long range. She had done this before; it was not an optimal situation, but there was no time to pick her up.

_Superman's on his way, _Meera told Roy _But the prisoners at Arkham are rioting again. Martha can't get away. _

_OK, _Roy responded, relieved they would be joined by at least one of "the Supers." _See if you can tap into our bad guys' warped little minds. It wouldn't hurt to find out what they're up to_. He leaned forward to ask Midori for an update on their arrival time.

"Superwoman can't make it," Batman announced.

"Why not?" Roy asked innocently. "There wouldn't be – I don't know – a riot going on at Arkham, would there?"

Arsenal noted with interest that the Dark Knight didn't seem disappointed at the prospect of missing a rematch between Superwoman and Chatichai. He wasn't alone. Roy was glad the senior "Super" had joined them today.

Batman squinted at the monitor and leaned forward, frowning. He touched a toolbar and a map materialized in the upper right corner of the screen.

"What?" Roy asked sharply, as Batman pushed a breath through tightened lips.

"They're headed for Yellowstone," he said.

"The national park?" Roy let his head fall against the bulkhead and briefly squeezed his eyes together. "There must be hundreds of tourists there."

"They may end up getting to see more than a geyser," Batman said grimly.

"Old Faithful," mused Roy as the shuttle hurtled over North Dakota. "That's us, too, isn't it?"

* * *

As he followed the band of escaped meta-villains across the Wyoming border, the Flash hoped beyond his experience and common sense that the fugitives would bypass the national park, or at least fly harmlessly over it. But Pillan, who had been leading the pack, had virtually skidded to a mid-air halt over Yellowstone Lake, apparently drawn to the dozens of potential hostages picnicking along its banks.

"Oh, _God,_" Wally groaned as the super-powered escapees hovered above the sparkling lake, apparently making plans. He communicated the bad news to Meera, along with his location, and then did a double-take as two of the fugitives moved a dozen yards away from the pack.

It was DevilDog and his telekinetic girlfriend, who was now gliding on a broken section of broken park bench. They appeared to be arguing. Even at a distance, Tuksin's emphatic "Let's get out of here" gesture was obvious. Chatichai, however, seemed insistent that they hold their ground.

Abruptly, DevilDog jerked back in alarm and abruptly broke off the quarrel. Wally watched as the assassin stared into the distance beyond his girlfriend's shoulder.

At Superman.

DevilDog seized his Chatichai's arm and tried to drag her away, but she threw him off. Tuksin gave her a last, reluctant glance and sped away. _So much_, thought the Flash, _for true love._

He had been keeping a low profile, vibrating his body at a velocity that made him nearly invisible. But Superman was a presence that could be felt almost before he was seen. It might have been this presence – or maybe just an urge to admire the vivid blue sky, that caused one of the picnickers to look up. He caught sight of the Man of Steel, noticed the cluster of flyers in prison garb and drew the obvious conclusion. His hysterical shrieks were soon joined by those of the park's other guests, who grabbed their loved ones and started to flee.

The mass attempt to escape the site of what was clearly to be the field of an imminent battle was apparently counter to the bad guys' plans, which Meera had described as a hastily conceived and somewhat random attempt to acquire hostages. With a sweep of his hand, Pillan brought a score of elephant-sized twisters up from the park's well-manicured grasslands, roping in picnickers who had not gathered up their families quickly enough. A few isolated tourists escaped the whirlwind corral by diving frantically into the lake, but most of them were trapped.

* * *

As he broke through the clouds and rocketed toward the park, Superman's first instinct was to go after DevilDog. But he could not risk leaving the Flash to fight a half-dozen super-powered criminals, not when they couldn't be sure when back-up was coming. The Man of Steel moved into place as he watched his crimson-clad teammate zig-zag through the loose wall of twisters, evacuating ensnared families as quickly as he could. It was going to be an ugly fight. Superman could tell that from the quick run-down Meera had given them on the escapees, none of whom could be remotely described as rational.

Besides Pillan and Chatichai, neither of whom Superman had fought before, there was Fireball, a fire starter whose real name was Tandie Flint. Meera reported some disturbing changes in Flint's appearance and abilities since her incarceration – including the newly discovered power of flight. Ladybug, who could communicate with and control insects, had also seemed to acquire a new look and it was nowhere near as adorable as her tiny namesake. Nothing else about her was cute, Superman noted: Meg Felix-Smith had once murdered three children when she sent a swarm of killer bees onto a playground in Texas

Folding Phil Feldman was the least violent member of the remaining sextet. His ability to flatten to the thickness of a sheet of paper – and when necessary fold himself in half in order to slide under a door – contributed to his success as a successful cat burglar. The last of the group, Whip, was a martial artist with super-strength and a methodically murderous mindset.

Whip was a recent nemesis of Wonder Woman. Superman wished Diana hadn't bowed out of the League as soon as Martha was able to resume her duties. He would have liked having his old friend around for this one.

_Superman. The Green Lantern is nearly there. He asks if you want him to come in from the west so you can box them in._

"No," Superman said, his eyes trained on the six hovering fugitives. "Have him swing around and join me. I want to push them out, not trap them. There are too many tourists here."

But the villains evidenced no interest in being driven away. They were rapidly dropping into the circle of cyclones, toward a clearing near the sparkling lake.

After ordering Meera to warn the Flash to stay clear, Superman inhaled, pursed his lips and blew a fine, yet powerful stream of air in a perfect arc, systematically hitting each twister with the pinpoint accuracy needed to blow it away without accidentally running down any bystanders. The circle of cyclones broke apart and he moved in on the attackers. They had managed to touch ground in the middle of the screaming chaos and seemed to be on the look-out for hostages.

The group of villains broke apart, stationing themselves around the picnic area like a basketball team working a zoned defense. Superman was more of a one-to-one player. He soared after Pillan, shrugging off the series of lightning bolts the self-styled Chilean god hurtled at him without bothering to dodge them.

Sensing himself no match for Superman, Pillan threw a jagged steam of lightning at an overhang of rock, apparently hoping the Man of Steel would have to deflect the crumbling rubble before it crushed one of the fleeing tourists. Superman merely turned his head slightly, released another puff of air, and sent the debris back over the top of the cliff. This effort took seconds; unfortunately, that was all Chatichai needed to gather her wits, and when she started bombarding Superman with flying objects, she chose the one thing that he could neither punch away nor evade: Tourists. A dozen bodies, most of them belonging to children, went hurtling toward the Man of Steel and the lake that lay just beyond him.

By now Gren had joined them. He was locked in battle with Pillan, trading twister for green twister as Superman and the Flash began desperately seizing the flailing human projectiles.

"We've got to take her out," Wally shouted at him. "This is nowhere near her worst."

Scooping a sobbing youngster in his arms, Superman spun around and fired a reluctant ribbon of heat at the telekinetic, hitting her in the shoulder and triggering an immediate stop to the barrage of human projectiles. She grabbed at the wound, cursing, then stepped onto a picnic blanket, which she used to lift herself into the air as though it was a flying carpet.

Chatichai rose too high, too fast, her eyes locked on Superman instead of the sky around her. She was almost decapitated by the _Javelin-13_.

* * *

"Damn, we missed," Roy said, although the near-collision had been unplanned. He, Midori and Batman watched the telekinetic duck as she plummeted a few meters before stabilizing herself. "That would have been one down."

He wouldn't have minded watching Chatichai take a self-inflicted hit to the back of the head, Batman thought as the _Jav_ swooped gracefully toward a cliff above the lake. She had nearly killed Martha – and had temporarily blinded her – with a similarly placed blow with a wrecking ball and a dump truck.

He wasn't the only one with Superwoman on his mind.

"Blonde girl!" Chatichai demanded loudly, searching for her nemesis as Arsenal's team stormed out of the shuttle and into combat positions. She glared at the _Javelin_, furious that Superwoman was not among its passengers, and the small craft started to shudder. Midori's face contorted in horror at the prospect of losing another shuttle on its maiden voyage and she started blasting haphazardly at the telekinetic with a laser pistol.

But before Chatichai had fully committed to her task, she found herself encased in an enormous emerald globe.

"You women hold onto your grudges, don't you?" Gren taunted as he broke away from Pillan. He smirked as she pounded furiously against the walls of the gigantic orb. "How 'bout you take on Blond Boy instead? We never did get to finish that dance in Minneapolis."

As Gren drew the captive telekinetic closer, Batman pushed a button on his belt and leaped off the cliff, hoping the capture of Chatichai was going to be as simple as Gren seemed to be making it. The glider wings built into the caped crusader's fighting suit opened soundlessly and he swooped across the picnic area, searching out the villain known as Ladybug.

The gaunt, pale, ebony-haired fugitive had sicced a cloudlike swarm of buzzing gnats – tens of thousands of them – on a terrified family who crouched cowering by the edge of Yellowstone Lake. They had not attempted to flee into the water, Batman saw, because one of them was in a wheelchair.

Batman flicked a trio of smoke capsules at her feet, mindful that a stronger substance might endanger the frightened family. The pellets did the trick: Ladybug lost control of the gnats and spun eagerly toward the Dark Knight.

"You don't look like much of a ladybug to me," he said, advancing on her.

"The name's _Black Sabbath_," she said. "I've been born again."

It was not the usual prison conversion, but Batman quickly picked up on the Biblical theme as hundreds of enormous frogs rose plague-like from the lake, looking bizarrely menacing as they bounded toward him.

* * *

As the Flash stepped in to take up the fight with Pillan, Arsenal and Midori jumped into the fray, taking on Fireball and Folding Phil respectively. That left Whip for Superman, who figured he'd take out the martial artist quickly enough and then give Wally a hand.

There had been no reason to expect much of a challenge from the Wyoming local, whose real name was Lars Joelson. Whip had bloodied Wonder Woman's lip once, with a blitz of razor-fast sidekicks, but Superman was stronger, faster and considerably less vulnerable.

But Superman had not been in on the previous battles involving SuperMax inmates. He was about to learn what his teammates already knew: Some prisoners were finding incarceration there a rejuvenating experience. As the Man of Steel turned toward him, Whip threw a left hook to his jaw. Superman let the blow land, assuming the fight would end when the fugitive broke his own hand on the indestructible mandible. But the felon showed no signs of pain as he followed with an uppercut. The same could not be said for Superman. Both blows had hurt.

* * *

Lian cursed as she dodged a cadre of armed guards trooping noisily past her toward the prison's highest security wing. She raced for the control room, hoping to cut off whoever had deactivated the force field Midori had designed for the prison after the first mass breakout. As powerful as they had become, not one of the escapees could have broken through the field: Midori had tested it on Superman.

The field was dropped only for the briefest periods during shift changes. Lian had originally assumed Lighting Guy Bob had escaped during one of these intervals. Now she was betting he'd been given an all-day pass by whoever had been playing mad scientist with a bunch of killer meta-humans.

As she wove around a pair of nurses who were dragging an injured guard toward the prison clinic, Lian vowed to never leave home again without her weapons. She hoped mightily that the pharmacist hadn't been taking her own vitamins.

* * *

Midori toed a control on her rocked boots and jetted after Folding Phil, who, like his cohorts, had undergone some alarming changes. The man who could once only slip under doors could now stretch himself like an endless wad of silly Putty. He was putting his new abilities to the test by wrapping himself, anaconda-like, around a screaming woman whose tiny daughter stood yards away, wailing for her mommy. The woman cried out for her daughter to run, even as the flexible fugitive coiled himself more tightly around her, choking the breathe – and the sound – out of her.

Feldman was the only one among the fugitives who had not yet committed murder. It did not seem to be a distinction he valued. His captive's face was now purpling and Midori saw with horror that Phil's fluid torso was shifting, stretching. The arm wrapped around the woman's throat was becoming as flat and hard as the blade of a sword.

Midori had a belt full of weapons design to immobilize a polymorph, but when she saw Phil's knifelike arm driving into his victim's throat, the Coluan did something that she had never done before. She acted on instinct, swooping behind a startled Phil and blasting him in the back with the flames from her rocket boots. Phil roared in pain and rage, dropping the woman, who snatched up her daughter and ran.

Cursing, Phil spun toward his attacker. He looked up in the direction where the assault had come from, saw nothing, then dropped his eyes and smiled. Midori's boots were not meant to be used as flamethrowers. The momentum caused by the force of the jet boots against the criminal's body had caused her to lose her balance and slam hard into the ground. Her lungs felt as though they had been filled with hot cement. Through the haze of pain, Midori could see Folding Phil move furiously toward her. She reached shakily toward her waist for a weapon – but her belt was gone.

* * *

Arsenal had repelled down the embankment, his latest arrow launcher – an ultra high-tech six-month anniversary present from Midori – pre-loaded with a concoction designed to extinguish a firestarter. He would have found Fireball easily enough, even if she hadn't been busily igniting the park's bushes and trees. Tandie Flint had been a chubby blonde woman when they'd zipped her into an aluminized suit and dragged her into SuperMax. Now she was lean, orange-haired – and as blue as the flames in a gas stove.

"Hey there, hottie," Roy called as he aimed the launcher at the middle of her back.

The pyrokinetic spun toward him, ready for a fight. A cocky smile threatened to split her face as she hurled a barrage of baseball-sized fireballs at Roy as if she were a human pitching machine.

The flaming projectiles made focusing the launcher slightly more difficult, but Roy's decades of experience compensated for the deadly distraction. He fired off a succession of arrows machine-gun style; they drove tips-first into the ground encircling Fireball. Tiny, curved blades burst from the nock of the arrows and began to spin blindingly fast as powerful micro-vacuums sounded from within the shafts' narrow hollows, sucking away the oxygen Fireball needed to produce flame. Arsenal quickly followed up with a classic fire extinguisher arrow and topped it all off by encasing the pyrokinetic in a tear-proof, aluminum sac.

Impossibly, the fireproof encasement burst into flames. Arsenal wasn't sure how the physics of that worked and he wasn't planning to ask for an explanation. The aluminized bag melted off the smirking firestarter before he could reach for another arrow. Without tearing her glittering eyes from his, Fireball squatted down to pick up a stone by her feet and gave it a squeeze. Steam and liquefied rock oozed between her fingers.

"Your little toys may have worked against Fireball," she said. "But you may find _Inferno_ a little too hot to handle. And as Arsenal scrambled for cover, she rose into the air, showering him with a handful of molten projectiles.

* * *

As fast as Whip had become, Superman was faster and now he was annoyed – at himself. Underestimating an opponent was pure arrogance, Superman thought as he sidestepped Whip's trademark kick and wrapped a hand around the villain's airborne ankle. A slight flick of his wrist sent Whip flying, much in the style of his favorite weapon, first outward, then even more quickly back, where he smashed head-first into the Man of Steel's massive chest.

Superman hurriedly eased the unconscious fugitive to the ground, bound him in one of Midori's force fields and shot forward into a small tornado Pillan had set against the Flash. He shouldered the twister toward Inferno, who was literally exchanging fire with Arsenal. The tornado sucked the fiery felon into its powerful funnel, then Superman sent it and its passenger into the lake.

* * *

"Thanks," Arsenal shouted, but Superman was already rocketing toward Pillan. Arsenal's eyes swept through the park, noting that the solid light bubble Gren had wrapped around Chatichai had not stopped her from flinging boulders, benches and other objects at him. Batman was wading through a sea of frogs and – were those_ locusts_ coming up in the distance?

Arsenal was on his way to help Batman when his gaze fell upon Midori. She was scrambling vainly for her weapons belt as Folding Phil ballooned around her like a billowing sail. Roy's boots ground into the park's well-manicured lawn as he changed course, charging toward his lover as he unslung his favorite bow and reached over his shoulder for an arrow.

* * *

The weapon Midori had planned to use on Phil – a tetanus ray – would have locked his muscles in place for hours. But the belt that sheathed it was now lying fifteen feet away.

Feldman noticed her desperate glance toward the belt and elongated a fettuccine-like arm in order to seize it.

"This what you're looking for?" he asked, shaking the belt at her. "You gonna hurt me with one of these gizmos?"

Midori scrambled backward on her elbows as Phil advanced upon her, now close to encasing her in a body that continued to flatten and expand. The weapons she'd strapped across her back were trapped painfully between her back and the ground. She lifted her rocket boots toward Phil's midsection, hoping to blast him again, but they had been damaged in the fall and merely sputtered like a cigarette lighter on its last drops of butane.

"A superhero ain't bad for a first kill," Phil said, as Midori watched the sunlight disappear. "I'll wrap you up like a nice little gift."

* * *

Arsenal fired a salvo of arrows at Feldman as the felon's billowing body constricted around Midori. The first projectile pierced Phil's fluid flesh, but as he felt himself being attacked, the fugitive instinctively hardened his back to the consistency of steel and the rest of the arrows bounced harmlessly off of him. Roy had just reached back for his last resort – a flamethrower rifle – when he saw Feldman's distorted body jerk spasmodically and collapse onto Midori like a deflated parachute. She was already wriggling her way out from beneath the rumpled felon when Arsenal raced forward to help her.

Roy pulled her to her feet. "You all right?" he asked.

A bit dazed, Midori nodded, then rummaged under the rumpled Phil, extracting a handful of circuitry attached to the inside sole of one of her rocket boots. Roy looked down and noticed her right foot was bare.

"Quick and easy Taser," Midori explained, as if she was saying, "Quick and easy biscuits."

Roy laughed and shook his head. "Every time I think you couldn't possibly surprise me again…."

Midori's cheeks turned emerald, but before she could fashion a characteristically modest response, an explosion, quickly followed by a chorus of screams, made them look west, where Old Faithful had just turned into something new.

* * *

A frog, when startled, will emit an unsettling shriek as it hops to safety. Batman had spent enough time in the world's jungles to be aware of this and not be unnerved by it. But the thousands of frogs Black Sabbath had sent to attack him did not seem the slightest bit afraid; their screams were filled with rage.

Batman touched a button on his belt, activating an ultra-high frequency tone that was defaulted to drive away dogs. This did nothing to the frogs. He rotated the button, adjusting it to various frequencies, hoping one would create enough discomfort in the rabid amphibians to cause them to flee. As he brushed away a leopard frog that had pounced at his forehead, Batman looked up past the lake and caught sight of the gargantuan cloud of locusts humming ominously toward him. There had not been locusts in this region for millennia. Somehow, Black Sabbath had summoned them from hundreds of miles away – and they had closed the gap with unnatural speed and savagery.

He gave the high-frequency button a final twist. He had always been reluctant to harm animals, but he was going to have to activate the fighting suit's electrical field before the locusts got to him. Fortunately, the last setting hit the mark. The frogs' shrieks shifted from fury to fear and the army of amphibians hopped hastily back toward the lake.

Black Sabbath turned to him, laughing as the locusts crossed toward them over the surface of the lake, which was now rollicking with the force frogs leaping for cover. But the fugitive had made the mistake of turning all of her attention to Batman, allowing herself to be entertained as he was fending off her amphibian plague. The bystanders she had been terrorizing had fled. Batman held his breath and flung a handful of gas capsules at her; they exploded on the ground, releasing a disorienting chemical that sent the escaped meta-villain swaying. He had hoped that in her confusion, Black Sabbath would lose control of the locusts; what happened was even better: The thick-bodied insects seemed to sense who had telepathically torn them from their natural habitats and the livid creatures went for blood. They slammed into their exploiter as one, consuming her in a murderous humming cloud.

Batman felt less inclined than he had a few seconds earlier to harm the insects, but locusts in this part of the country would constitute agricultural disaster. He switched on the suit's electrical field and tried to ignore the non-stop sizzling sound as he waded into the swarm of bugs to retrieve the now-catatonic Black Sabbath. As soon as he had her clear, he pulled what amounted to an insecticide bomb from his belt and hurtled it into the middle of the swarm. A few of the locusts escaped. Batman hoped they were headed home.

He was cocooning Black Sabbath in a force field when he heard the blast. Old Faithful was erupting, but the hot liquid that spewed from its steaming maw wasn't water. It was lava.

* * *

As soon as he saw Superman coming, Pillan had scattered a dozen twisters throughout the park, taking care to place them directly in the path of evacuating tourists. Even if he had known ahead of time that the whirlwinds were a distraction for something infinitely more cataclysmic, Superman would have had no choice but to head after them; knocking out Pillan wouldn't have stopped the twisters once they'd gained momentum. Superman dispersed them quickly and was soon rocketing back into the sky to finish the would-be weather god.

The explosion, loud as a grenade, caused Superman's gaze to drop down towards the park and what he saw made his heart seize with fear.

"Oh my God," he whispered.

* * *

Meera had been coordinating communications between her teammates as best she could from more than a thousand miles away when she was simultaneously bombarded with near-frantic messages from Midori, Batman and Superman.

… _the super volcano under the park…_

… _Pillan's activated the magma chamber…_

… _destroy the continent… worldwide devastation…_

Meera was no geologist, but it didn't take her long to untangle the message: Old Faithful was fueled by one of the Earth's most powerful volcanoes. A forty-mile wide chamber of magma lay beneath Yellowstone. Pillan, even more powerful now than the last time they had fought him, had somehow triggered an eruption through Old Faithful – and, Superman was reporting urgently – some of the park's smaller geysers. If the pressure continued to build, an eruption of catastrophic proportions would wipe out much of North America and the ensuing volcanic winter could push humanity to the brink of extinction.

_Can't you use your super-breath? _Meera asked Superman._ And freeze it?_

_I don't think you understand the magnitude of this magma chamber, _Superman responded, adding uncertainly,_ I can try._

_Try,_ Meera pleaded. _I'll pray for you._

_Let the others know what's going on,_ Superman answered. _Then I'll take those prayers. _

* * *

Gren was still struggling against Chatichai, who was bombarding him from all sides with every boulder, park bench, statue and tree she could rip away from the park. He had transferred the globe of solid light from the telekinetic to himself and was forcing the sphere incrementally toward her. As he listened to Meera's report on the super volcano, Gren chanced a glance through the hailstorm of debris in time to see Superman feinting down toward Old Faithful before hurtling up toward Pillan.

Chatichai could cause a lot of damage, but it looked like Pillan might be close to destroying the world. Sucking in a steadying breath, Gren willed the emerald orb that had been protecting him into an enormous curved skateboard ramp and deflected Chatichai's non-stop barrage of projectiles directly at Pillan.

It didn't matter that most of the debris missed: A boulder and a sizable chunk of tree slammed into Pillan's side as Superman hit him from below. The weather-manipulating meta-villain was not invulnerable. Gren thought it was damn decent of Superman to drag the unconscious bastard back with him as he sped toward the now-rumbling earth. It was the last thought Gren would have a while. He turned to resume his fight against Chatichai and was knocked cold by a large wooden sign that said "Welcome to Yellowstone."

* * *

Using his super-breath to cool the surging magma seemed like a long shot to Superman, but he could see no other way to reduce the pressure in the colossal chamber before a deadly eruption ejected gallons of lava into the air. Superman headed first to Old Faithful. If the geyser was spewing lava, it meant a fissure had been formed between its base and the super volcano four miles below. It was likely the largest channel between the Earth's surface and the magma chamber and therefore the best place for him to attempt entry.

As he tossed Pillan aside and drew in a breath so deep it hurt, Superman watched his teammates evacuating the few tourists who had been unable to escape earlier. Then he plunged into the mouth of the geyser and headed into the immense pool of magma.

* * *

The Flash was in the middle of evacuating an elderly woman from the park at a velocity he hoped would not harm her when a fresh round of screams filled the air.

_Now what? _Wally's eyes followed the line of pointing fingers and he nearly dropped the old lady in his effort to catch Gren before he hit the ground. A touch to the Green Lantern's throat assured the Flash that his teammate was still alive. With Gren slung over one shoulder and the woman wrapped securely in his arms, Wally headed toward an emergency tent that would provide not a shred of protection if Superman was unable to stop the super volcano from erupting.

* * *

The quaking had almost stopped as Batman scouted the now-abandoned park for survivors. He hoped that meant Superman had managed to prevent an eruption; he had seen Clark burst from the mouth of Old Faithful several times, to suck down more air before disappearing back into the geyser. Superman, Meera reported, had been tunneling through miles of magma, cooling as much of it as he could as he drove through the chamber.

The wail of pure horror pierced the air just as Batman was heading back to the evacuation area. It came from behind a thick cluster of trees that did not quite obscure a twister left over from one of Pillan's earlier attacks. The Dark Knight raced around the foliage to a rock-studded clearing, where a young woman lay on the ground, her leg twisted at an odd angle. She sat directly in the whirlwind's path, but she was not crying out for herself: A baby carriage stood between the woman and the twister. Batman could see the flash of a tiny set of toes as the whirlwind headed inexorably closer. The woman dragged herself desperately toward the carriage, but the twister was seconds from sucking her child into its deadly funnel.

Batman lunged at the infant, snatching him from the carriage just as the twister tipped it over. It had been a miraculously long leap and Batman landed awkwardly, losing his footing for the second he had needed to avoid the ravenous whirlwind. He barely managed to jerk his cape around the baby, shielding it, as the twister enveloped them both. He heard the mother's tortured shriek, then a deafening rush of air, as he hunched around the baby, trying to protect it from the relentless spray of rocks, wind and dirt. Stones pummeled him with the force of bullets as the twister carried them along for what was probably a few seconds, but seemed like an eternity. Batman clutched the baby tighter as he started blacking out, hoping that his unconscious body might continue to protect the infant until the whirlwind had run its course.

He was lucid enough – though barely – to see the big, blue-sleeved hand as it wrapped around his bicep and hauled him from the twister's insistent grasp. And then he was tearing his cape from around the baby and Superman, still holding him steady, was saying, "He's alive."

The baby had apparently been enjoying the ride; he responded to the sudden lack of motion with a howl of great displeasure. Superman, despite looking as beat as Batman had ever seen him, started to laugh.

He knew his teammate had already done so, but Batman checked the infant for injuries. Minute scratches crisscrossed his fat little legs, but otherwise, he seemed fine.

"Thanks," Batman said, with considerably more heart than he ordinarily did. Superman released his arm and stepped back, his features suddenly inscrutable. Batman started to ask about the volcano when a flicker of a shadow had them both looking skywards.

"Chatichai's escaping," Batman said. The telekinetic Thai, having seen the last of her cronies fall to the Justice League, had apparently reconsidered her lover's decision to run.

Superman's face darkened. "The hell she is," he said, and launched himself into the sky.

* * *

Once Superman disappeared after Chatichai, Batman looked down at the squalling baby, then at the park around him. They were nowhere near the place where they'd been swept up by the twister. The infant's mother was still injured and undoubtedly frantic now as well. He dashed back to the evacuation site, shoved the child into a maternal-looking woman's arms, and then headed back to find the baby's mother.

She was gone. As he looked for signs of struggle or violence, Batman recognized the Flash's heel print near the place where he had last seen the woman. Satisfied that she was safe, he headed back to make sure mother and child had been reunited.

* * *

By the time Superman had set out after Chatichai, he had had it with the telekinetic and her twisted gang. After her original encounter with Pillan in Chile, Martha had told her father of the weather manipulator's desire to destroy civilization in order to refashion it to his own tastes; today he had nearly managed it, though whether the mega-eruption he had almost triggered would have left anyone to rule over was in considerable doubt. It had been years since Superman had been forced to exert himself in the way he had in order to stabilize the super-volcano. He was exhausted and irritable and he wanted the fight over. It was probably a good thing that he didn't know Chatichai had nearly killed his daughter. He was already feeling inclined to be less gentle than usual.

He circled around the Thai telekinetic, cutting her off as she sped along the currents on a picnic blanket that now resembled a large, filthy dishtowel.

Superman knew almost no Thai. "Give it up," he said forbiddingly, first in English, then French, and finally Mandarin. She didn't understand his words, but Superman's intent was clear. Chatichai glared at him defiantly and hit him with a commercial airliner.

* * *

The Flash had taken the infant's mother to a local emergency room. At Batman's request, the hospital was sending an ambulance to retrieve her son. The matronly woman he had asked to watch over the baby eyed the cluster of the filthy, disheveled superheroes and approached the one who seemed the cleanest and least intimidating.

"I have to go," the woman said. She attempted to hand the baby to Midori. "I hope you don't have any trouble getting this little guy back to his mom."

Midori's yellow eyes widened and she took an involuntary step back. "Oh… oh, no. I… I might hurt it."

"You've never held a baby before?" the woman asked, amazed.

Midori shook her head.

"Come here," the woman told her kindly. When Midori failed to do so, instead assuming a look of genuine terror, the woman stepped forward and gently transferred the boy into the Coluan's arms,

"That's right," the woman said. "Just use your elbow to support his head… there you go."

The baby settled against Midori's chest, sighed, pursed his tiny lips and fell instantly to sleep. "See?" the woman said reassuringly. "He likes you."

Midori inspected the baby for signs that it liked her. Finding none, she looked up to ask the woman how she had drawn this conclusion and found herself standing alone.

* * *

"I'm really sick of that bitch," Arsenal muttered to Batman as they watched Superman struggle to right the jet without injuring its occupants. Chatichai, determined to keep her pursuer occupied, uprooted a large pine tree and hurtled it toward the center of the plane. The Man of Steel pushed the craft upward, dodging the tree, which he caught one-handed as he gently eased the jetliner to the ground.

Arsenal elbowed Batman. "That's our boy," he said.

_And my girl_, Batman thought, watching in disbelief as a blur of blue hit Chatichai from behind.

* * *

As reluctant as he was to leave the plane without checking to see if anyone needed medical care, Superman was convinced that a greater number of lives would be at stake if he didn't put an end to Chatichai right away. He soared determinedly back into the sky, where his anger melted suddenly into an astonished grin.

Superwoman was hovering over the park, holding an unconscious Chatichai by the collar of her prison coveralls.

"Catch!" she shouted to her father. She tossed the limp fugitive to him in an easy underhand.

"Everyone OK?" she called.

Superman gave her a thumbs-up.

"Good. Gotta go!" Superwoman did a quick aerial flip eastward and disappeared.

* * *

Superman landed by the edge of the near-empty evacuation site to a round of cheers. As he bound the unconscious Chatichai with a force field and added her to the pile of prisoners, Roy grinned at him and said something about "the family that plays together."

"Where's Gren?" Superman asked tersely.

A drained voice behind him said, "Right here" and the Green Lantern winced as he touched down near his teammates.

Roy asked sharply, "You get permission to leave the hospital?"

Gren shrugged. Midori, who had been staring in fascination at the baby in her arms, spoke without seeming to realize she was interrupting.

"Try holding this baby," she suggested earnestly to Roy. "It's… it's interesting."

Superman masked a grin by pretending to scratch his forehead. Wally didn't bother to hide his glee as he bumped his shoulder against Roy's.

"You're dead," he whispered. Roy, his face a carroty orange, ignored him.

"I've held babies," he assured Midori. "You go ahead."

Batman walked over to Superman and motioned him aside. Roy watched them out of the corner of his eye. It was impossible to hear them, but he could tell whatever Batman had to say was making Superman uncomfortable. The Man of Steel mumbled something while staring at the ground, bid his other teammates goodbye and shot into the clouds. The Dark Knight's face remained impassive.

"Let's get out of here," Roy said, as he watched an ambulance driver take the baby from a reluctant Midori. "I'm tired as hell." He looked from the pile of prisoners to Gren and asked, "You up to hauling these guys back to prison?"

"I'm heading over there, too," the Flash said as Gren nodded. "If we're lucky, Lian's gotten hold of whoever did this to these prisoners. I want to be there for the big reveal."

* * *

For a middle-aged woman who wasn't in particularly great shape, Terianne Yorkin had managed to put up an impressive fight when Lian cornered her near one of the sealed off prison exits. In deactivating the force field, Yorkin apparently thought she was disabling the automatic locks on the emergency doors; she hadn't planned her own escape nearly as well as she had her plot to release her super-powered lab rats.

"Why would you do this?" Lian asked angrily. She and the warden stared at Yorkin through the two-way monitor built into the door of a high-security cell.

Yorkin smiled bitterly. "You don't approve of experimentation on prisoners?" she asked.

"No, Terianne," said the Flash, whose sudden appearance at Lian's side made the warden jump. "And you're the last person I'd expect to approve of it either."

Lian looked questioningly at him.

"Told you her name sounded familiar," the Flash said. "I looked her up on the shuttle's monitor before heading over here. No record on a Terianne Yorkin. But we have a Clive Yorkin in the database and he had a daughter."

"He couldn't touch me," Yorkin whispered, her eyes burning with angry tears. "After what they did to him."

"Clive was a lifer who agreed to take place in a prison experiment a couple decades ago," Wally explained. "It didn't go very well. The idea was to get rid of his murderous impulses. Instead, he was turned into a psychopath with a death touch.

"My Uncle Barry fought him," he added. "Yorkin went on trial for killing my aunt, but he was acquitted."

"My father wasn't a killer," Terianne sobbed. "Until you people made him one."

The Flash and Lian exchanged a skeptical look. Clive Yorkin hadn't been in prison for jaywalking.

"There are other ways to advocate for prison reform," Wally told Terianne. "Your little payback scheme nearly ended the world."

"My world was ended when I was six years old," she responded. She knuckled away her tears and glared definitely at them.

Wally sighed. "Let's get out of here," he said to Lian. "I want to run by that barbecue shack before it closes."

* * *

Adrienne's usual post-riot pep talk was close to its long-winded conclusion when Martha slipped through the conference room door. The director froze in mid-sentence when he saw her, nearly gagging over a contempt he could no longer publicly express. Since Martha had been revealed to him as the girlfriend of the asylum's most generous benefactor, Adrienne had given her a wide berth, but the effort not to berate her for skipping a mandatory meeting left him momentarily mute.

"Sorry I'm late," Martha told him. "I was knocked kind of unconscious for a while."

Adrienne's purple face turned white.

"Who…?" he asked, as someone in the room murmured, "Wish I'd thought of that."

Martha shrugged. "Don't know. One of the inmates."

The director hastily dismissed the staff and rushed over to Martha, his indignation melting into panic. He was already on the brink of dismissal for these unavoidable riots. An irate phone call from Bruce Wayne to the board of governors would surely push him over the edge.

"Maybe you should head over to the clinic," he said nervously.

Martha considered this suggestion. "No," she said offhandedly. "I checked myself in the mirror and my eyes weren't dilated or anything."

Adrienne struggled not to hyperventilate as Martha blinked and gave a head an abrupt shake, as though trying to clear it.

"Although… I do feel kind of woozy." She looked up at him quizzically. "You think maybe I should call Bruce and ask him to pick me up?"

"That would be a good idea," the director said hoarsely. "We don't.…" Sweat broke out across his forehead. "….We don't want anything happening to our star fellow."

_

* * *

_

They had forgotten, they had forgotten him and he would let them forget for now, though he was here, still here, not going away, not ever, let them forget for now, they would see, soon see, he would drain their blood away and as they left their bodies behind, they would see that he was still here.

* * *

Martha had played the "Bruce card," with great reluctance, but she wanted to see for herself that he was all right and she needed Adrienne's permission to leave work early. She phoned headquarters as soon as she stepped into the parking lot, but Roy told her that Batman was already heading home. She beat the Batwing into the cave by minutes.

Reassured by Arsenal that her lover was unharmed, Martha began to revel in her hit-and-run conquest of Butri Chatichai. It was Bruce's victory as much as hers, she believed, the product of the training he'd initiated after her first disastrous encounter with the telekinetic. Martha had barreled over to Yellowstone as soon as the riot was over, eager to test her new skills against the telekinetic. She was glad the encounter hadn't taken long. She couldn't have explained a prolonged absence from work.

Martha's exuberance faded as she watched Batman climb down from the plane. He was battered, exhausted and filthy. When he saw her, he pushed back his mask and offered her a brief, tired smile; the deep purple welt on his cheek made Martha feel a little sick.

Without a word, she guided him to the shower, helped him undress and joined him under the hot spray. Bruce started to speak, but Martha touched tender fingers to his torn lips and urged him wordlessly to lean against the cool tile wall.

"Relax," she said. "Just rest."

He nodded, watching with weary eyes as she floated up to shampoo his hair, gently pushing away the rivulets of muddy water as they trickled down his face. She glided back onto the shower floor, rubbed a bar of soap between her hands and began stroking the dirt and sweat from his chest and shoulders.

"Alfred usually just hands me a washcloth," he murmured.

"Would you like me to call him?" Martha asked, as she rubbed her soapy hands along his hard stomach.

"No thank you," Bruce said. "I'll suffer through this."

She lifted herself from the floor to kiss him, her eyes sparkling, then continued cleansing his body with healing hands. He groaned in disappointment when she finally turned off the shower, burying his face in her breasts when she floated up to towel off his head.

Martha laughed. "Baby, I think that had better wait."

"I'm just looking for a soft place to rest my head," Bruce assured her.

Martha leaned him back against the shower wall, wrapped a small towel around herself and stepped out to find him a pair of pajama bottoms.

"Oh, hi, Alfred," she said cheerfully, as she nearly collided with the elderly butler. "I'm just taking care of our boy, here."

"Very good, Miss Martha," Alfred replied in a strangled voice. He spun toward the elevator in an impressive pirouette and hastened away.

"My butler still alive?" Bruce asked her, as she handed him the pajama trousers and wiggled into one of his overlarge t-shirts. "Or did the sight of you in that washcloth give him a massive coronary?"

"I'm sure he's seen worse," Martha said, taking his hand and leading him out of the shower.

"But not better," Bruce said.

* * *

As Martha dabbed antibiotic ointment on the cuts and scrapes that peppered Bruce's body, he lay on his bed, wearily describing his part in the battle for Yellowstone. She could tell from his fluttering eyelids and clumsy speech that he was close to falling asleep, but also that something was bothering him.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "You got attacked by frogs and saved a baby. How can you beat that?"

He looked at the ceiling for a few long seconds before answering.

"I owe you an apology," he said finally.

Martha capped the tube of antibiotic. "Why?"

"When you told me you couldn't get there because of the riot, I was glad," Bruce said. "I didn't want to see you fight Chatichai again."

Martha asked quietly, "You didn't think I could handle her?"

"I was pretty sure you could," Bruce said. "Especially with all the training we've been putting in. But…." He tapered off.

"When you called me from the shuttle, were you planning on asking me to stay home?" Martha asked.

Bruce gave her a startled glance. "Of course not," he said.

"So you were just worried about me," Martha said.

He nodded. "I should have had more faith in you."

Martha sat cross-legged on the bed and ran a finger back and forth across his hand.

"When you went after Fray, I begged Alfred to let me follow you," she said. Bruce looked up at her, surprised.

"I had plenty of faith in you," Martha added. "I was still scared to death."

He considered this. "So it's OK…."

"For us to worry about each other?" Martha asked. "Comes with the whole love thing, I'm afraid."

He smiled and gave her wrist a little tug. "C'mere."

She snuggled blissfully against his side, taking care not to jostle him.

"We have to watch it, though," Bruce said a few moments later as he tightened an arm around her. "Can't let our feelings interfere with what we do."

Martha nodded. "It's the same thing with Roy and Midori." She smiled. "And Roy and Lian. And me and my father."

"Your father," Bruce said slowly. "I asked him to come over for dinner sometime next week – him and your mother. I think it's time we talked to them."

Martha pushed herself up on an elbow. "What did he say?"

"He blew me off," Bruce said. "Said they had a lot of things going on next week."

"I don't think he's ready to deal with it, yet," said Martha, adding, "My mom would fly over here under her own power if we asked her to dinner."

"I don't want to go over Clark's head," Bruce said. Realizing immediately how this sounded, he added, "I mean.…"

She laughed. "I know what you mean."

"You know, you'd be the perfect woman," said Bruce as Martha settled back into his arms. "Except for your questionable choice in men."

"My choice in men is excellent," Martha told him. "Now go to sleep."

* * *

Harvey lay on his cot, his hands crossed behind his head. He listened to the guards as they conducted yet another post-riot roll call. None of the inmates in his wing had been involved. Insurrection was a little difficult to pull off when you were in solitary confinement.

One of the guards had told him that Martha had been knocked unconscious; he wondered if it was true. She hated Adrienne's meetings enough to fake it and the director was no longer giving her a hard time. Something had changed in that relationship, enough for Martha to reclaim her second-story office, her old patients and her rule-flaunting methods. She would not say what had happened, though Harvey could guess.

"Dent."

If she had gotten injured, that might explain it: Why she hadn't come to see him today. The guard had said she'd left early. Harvey hoped she was OK, and that she'd be back by tomorrow.

"Dent." The guard calling roll tapped impatiently on his door.

"Still here," Harvey said.

* * *

**Next Chapter:** _Roy__ gets a startling phone call, Jim Gordon gives Bruce some good advice, Wally gives __Roy__ some... advice._

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

Gratitude galore to beta reader _**arg914**_

* * *

A startled towhee leapt from the stone birdbath in a burst of feathers as Roy rounded into his backyard. He leaned against the doorframe, panting but pleased, as he punched in the security code and the door clicked open. He'd burned another three seconds off his 10-mile run. _Not bad_, he thought smugly, _for an old guy_.

Midori, who had gone out earlier – probably to avoid joining him on the run – was still not home. Roy stuck a glass under the cold water dispenser on the door of his refrigerator, drained it in three gulps, then headed to the shower and cranked up the hot water. He had one leg through the opaque glass shower door when he heard the phone ring. Without bothering to grab a towel, he padded into the bedroom to answer it, frowning when the young man on the other end of the line asked nervously for Midori.

"She's not here," Roy said suspiciously. Midori didn't get a lot of phone calls. "Can I give her a message?"

"Oh – um, it's just Brad Jenkins from Deer Valley General." The local hospital. The muscles in Roy's shoulders tensed instantly.

"Is she all right?" he asked.

"Oh – oh, yes. It's nothing like that," Brad Jenkins told him. "It's just that she forgot to sign the release."

"The _release_?" Roy began to panic. He was sure Midori would have told him if she needed to have some kind of surgery.

"For the hospital newsletter," Jenkins explained. "She's been spending so much time in our nursery, we thought we'd ask her to take a picture."

Roy sat on the edge of the bed and threw a corner of the blanket over his lap.

"In the nursery," he repeated.

"Well, yes," Jenkins said. "She's been enjoying holding the babies."

For a long moment, Roy just sat there, chewing on his lips. Then he asked, "How long has this been going on?"

Jenkins hesitated, apparently aware that the conversation had spiraled considerably beyond a simple request for a signature. "Maybe you should… talk to her."

"I'll do that," Roy said bleakly. He thumbed the disconnect button on the receiver and tossed it onto Midori's pillow, then plodded back into the bathroom. Beads of hot water pelted him, but he could not shower away a mounting sense of dread. It had been more than a month since Batman had saved the baby at Yellowstone, but Midori still mentioned him at least once a day.

Roy twisted off the shower dial, wrapped a towel around his waist and walked, still dripping, into a small room in the back of the house that Midori had turned into an office. After wiping his hands carefully on the towel, he dropped onto the desk chair and flipped open her laptop, which immediately clicked and whirred to life. Roy positioned the cursor over the drop-down box beside the search engine and felt his stomach plunge along with the list of recent searches, nearly all of which had the words 'baby' or 'babies' in them.

Midori's most recent query had been _brain development in babies_. The preceding searches seemed more ominous: _raising a baby when both parents have dangerous jobs, ideal conditions for raising a baby, best age to have a baby, baby names, epidurals, how badly does it hurt to have a baby?, diapering babies, how does breastfeeding work?, baby nourishment, best techniques for holding babies_ and Midori's original entry, _how can you tell if a baby likes you?_

A drop of water from Roy's wet hair splashed onto the keyboard. He leaned back against the vinyl chair, pushed his bangs out of his eyes and released the breath he hadn't noticed he was holding. As soon as Midori came home, they were going to have to talk.

When she came in through the back a half an hour later with an armful of groceries, Roy was pacing in the kitchen in a pair of clean jeans and nothing else.

"Aren't you cold?" she asked, eying his bare chest and feet as he took the mesh shopping bag from her hand and transferred milk and vegetables into the refrigerator. "The air conditioning is on very high."

He shook his head. "Sit down."

She perched gingerly on a stool by the breakfast bar and looked at him inquiringly.

Roy wet his lips. "Why are you going to the hospital to hold babies?"

"Oh." Midori smiled. "I'm doing research."

"Research," Roy repeated. He dropped heavily into a kitchen chair.

Midori nodded enthusiastically. "I'm trying to decide if I want to have one."

Despite the fact that he knew exactly what she had been doing, Roy nearly choked on his own breath when she said the words. Midori looked at him with concern.

He finally managed to ask, "Were you planning on doing this by yourself?"

Midori brightened, apparently under the impression that Roy had been feeling left out. "Oh, no," she assured him. "It's going to be your baby, too."

During the time it took him to find his voice, Roy reminded himself that Midori had only been on Earth a little over two years. It would have been impossible for her to have mastered the complex dynamics of male-female relationships in so short a time.

"This is the kind of thing you really need to discuss early in the game," he explained. "Both people have to want it."

Nodding eagerly, Midori said, "Yes. And now I think I want it, too."

Roy blinked hard and squinted at Midori's unguarded face. He said numbly, "You think – you think _I_ want to have a baby?"

"Well, you hinted," Midori said. "At the aircraft plant."

His confusion at this point was so obvious that even Midori could see it. "You said having a baby trumps everything," she explained. "And that you wished you were there when Lian was born."

Recognizing that he needed to bring this misunderstanding to a quick and unequivocal end, Roy said bluntly, "I don't want to have a baby." At Midori's distressed look, he took her hand added, "With our lifestyle, we couldn't take care of a goldfish, let alone a child. We're never home. Our lives are in constant danger. It just wouldn't work."

"Well, maybe it could," said Midori in a small voice. "I'm still doing research."

Roy pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. "My life with you is perfect exactly the way it is. I don't want to make any changes."

Midori absently caressed his back, but Roy could tell from her distant look that while he might have shut the door on the subject, it wasn't locked and it wouldn't take a strong wind to blow it wide open.

* * *

Gotham's restaurants and bars had gone smoke free decades earlier, but the owner of Stogy Joe's had apparently misplaced the notice. Yellowish coffee mugs had been strategically placed at the bar where lead crystal ashtrays once sat and ceiling fans stirred the smoky air in defiance of physical principles that suggested actual ventilation was required to clear away fumes. It was a cops' restaurant, small, claustrophobic and so dark that when Jim Gordon stepped inside, the long rectangle of light that poured through the door was almost blinding.

"You didn't drive that… glow-in-the-dark thing here?" Gordon asked Bruce as he rose from a table near the front of the restaurant and the two men shook hands.

"I just got it back together," Bruce said sheepishly as they settled into a set of scarred wooden chairs. He had parked the Micro Cooper to the side of the tavern in the hopes that Gordon would miss it. "After lunch, I'm going to run over to AutoZone for a steering wheel cover and turn the keys over to Martha when she gets off work."

A pair of yellowing plastic menus lay across the middle of the table. Gordon picked one up and asked, "This a surprise?"

"Sort of," Bruce admitted. "She knows I've been working on it, but I never mentioned how close I was to finishing."

"You've got two dozen cars," Gordon said. "I can't believe you're going to let your girlfriend drive a Micro Cooper."

Bruce shrugged. "She loves that car," he said. "Anyway, it's not exactly a Micro Cooper anymore."

Gordon raised an eyebrow.

"It's more like a Porsche in Micro-Cooper's clothing," Bruce explained. Not a single bolt from the original power train remained under the car's day-glo green fuselage. The Micro-Cooper still looked like a toy – at least to Bruce – but its new top-of-the-line German-engineered custom-made engine would assure Martha a smooth, dependable ride.

"She's going to thank you for that," Gordon said, grinning lewdly.

Bruce shook his head. "She thinks I gave the car an unusually thorough tune-up. Let's keep it that way."

Gordon's furrowed his forehead. "I won't tell her," he said. "But why?"

"She's uncomfortable with me spending a lot of money on her," Bruce said. The new tires alone had cost twice what Martha had paid for the car.

"Her idea of 'a lot of money,' is probably pocket change to you," Gordon said.

"Yes," Bruce said a little sullenly. He wished Martha would loosen up a bit about the money thing. He knew she was concerned about not being able to reciprocate, but he resented having to second guess himself every time he saw something he thought she would like.

"Doesn't want to feel like a kept woman, huh?" Gordon asked.

Bruce sat back against the heavy wooden chair. "I never thought of that," he said slowly.

"Be glad," Gordon advised him. "You know she doesn't want you for your money."

The idea of Martha being after his fortune was almost laughable. Her idea of an extravagant date was Bistro Cilantro and a movie.

"Never an issue," Bruce said, frowning as he skimmed the menu.

"Not to you," Gordon said quietly. Bruce looked up from the list of entrees.

"One of your boys has expressed concern," Gordon said.

Bruce put down the menu.

"He was just looking out for you," Gordon said quickly.

"Since Dick loves her," Bruce said through his teeth. "I'm guessing it was Tim."

Gordon held up a hand. "He just wanted to know if I thought she was OK," he said. "I told him I thought she was a hell of a lot more than OK."

"When?" Bruce asked brusquely.

"Please don't make a big deal of this," Gordon said.

"_When_?" Bruce repeated.

"He called me about a month back," Gordon said. "You bring her to Philly for some kind of Labor Day thing?"

It had been a combination Labor Day barbecue and early birthday party for Tim and Kia's two-year-old daughter. Tim had invited him to bring Martha, apparently to ascertain the nature of her interest in Bruce. He did not know how she could have failed this test; she had played with the birthday girl, read a story to Tim's son and Dick's daughters and managed to get John Tamand'r, the Graysons' surly teen-aged son, to join an impromptu volleyball game. She'd also spent at least half an hour chatting amiably with Kia.

Tim's mistrust probably had more to do with Martha's lifelong friendship with Lian than any doubts he might have about Bruce's judgment when it came to women, but Bruce didn't like the idea of Tim going behind his back to check her out. And the idea that anyone he cared about would question the motives of somebody as transparently good-hearted as Martha made Bruce feel as hurt as it did angry.

"Bruce," Gordon said forcefully, and Bruce realized he'd been staring blindly at the stained plastic menu. "At the end of the conversation, Tim said that since Dick was as adamant as I was that Martha was good news, he guessed she deserved a chance. Meg, on the other hand," he added, as a young waitress sidled up to the table, "Is interested only in my money."

Meg grinned and stuck a fist on her hip. "I live for tips," she said. "Hey, Jimmy."

The old cop flirted with her cheerfully as he ordered a well-done steak and a baked potato. When Bruce asked if he could get the Mandarin salad without the chicken, he was sure he heard Gordon mutter, "whipped," but when he looked up, his friend was staring innocently at the waitress's shapely jean-clad legs.

"Be happy people care about you," Gordon told him when Meg sauntered into the kitchen. "My point was to make you understand why Martha probably feels the way she does about you spending money on her, not to start trouble between you and Tim. He's not the only person in the world who thinks like that."

After a dark silence, Bruce asked, "Do you think anyone's said anything to her?"

"It's usually the kind of thing people talk about behind your back," Gordon said, shrugging.

Bruce set his jaws together and picked up a half-filled pepper shaker. He tilted the small glass container absently to the left and watched a few gray-black grains fall onto the tabletop. Gordon watched him glower at the shaker and made a desperate attempt to salvage what they both had expected to be a pleasant lunch.

"So how excited is she going to be when she sees that car?" he asked.

Bruce allowed himself a slight smile. "Excited."

"How long have you been together now?" Gordon asked.

"More than four months," Bruce said.

Gordon nodded, impressed. "A record for you."

"Two weeks was a record for me," Bruce said. "If you factor out the felons."

Gordon laughed, then asked seriously, "She living with you?"

Bruce shook his head. He had, in fact, urged Martha to move more of her things into the manor, but she had made some kind of analogy between relationships and weightlifting and tearing something if you took things too fast, but getting strong if you increased the intensity at a slow, steady pace. It was a technicality anyway. They were together nearly every night.

"You going to marry her?" Gordon asked and was suddenly reminded of why Batman could drive a man to his knees with just a look.

"How 'bout those Goliaths?" Bruce asked coldly.

"Sorry," Gordon said. "None of my business. I guess you've got to wait until you see where she ends up anyway."

Bruce gave him a quizzical look.

"Isn't this her last year at the Academy of the Insane?" the old cop asked. "It'll be time for her to start sending out résumés soon. Or is she going to apply for a staff position at Arkham?"

"No," Bruce said dully. "That's not what she wants." There were only a few institutions in the world that sponsored the kind of research Martha hoped to pursue.

"Is what she wants here in Gotham?" Gordon asked meaningfully. He leaned back mechanically as Meg slide his plate across the table and warned him that it was hot.

"Yours isn't," the waitress added cheerfully, as she placed the salad in front of Bruce. He picked up his fork and pushed robotically at a miniature orange. His appetite had vanished. He wondered how soon he could ask to have the salad boxed without Gordon noticing his disquiet.

Bruce was not completely unaware that after her fellowship with Arkham was over, Martha hoped to finally pursue a long-planned career researching the workings of the criminal mind, and that only one facility in Gotham offered anything like what she was looking for. They had talked about her aspirations more than once during the year they had become friends – the year they had somehow managed to stumble into love without realizing or wanting it. But Martha had not mentioned a need to apply for jobs this soon. Bruce had thought they'd have almost another year before they'd have to worry about it.

"This is a great steak," Gordon said, chewing enthusiastically. He looked up at Bruce with a wicked grin. "Want a piece?"

"No," Bruce said. Gordon studied him, still chewing.

"You'd better do something," the old cop said. "My niece and her husband spent a year apart when he couldn't get an engineering job where they lived and she couldn't leave her law firm.

"What happened?" Bruce asked hollowly.

"Well, she did eventually marry the guy who got her pregnant," Gordon said. "But the kid was two by the time the divorce on her first marriage came through."

Bruce threw a handful of bills on the table. "I love having lunch with you, Jim," he said as he waved over the waitress. "It's always so uplifting."

* * *

Wally let himself into Roy's western Colorado ranch home and looked around the empty living room.

"Hello?" he called. He felt uneasy finding the house so quiet. There had been an odd lilt to Roy's voice when he asked Wally to come over. Wally had been sure at the time that something personal was bothering his friend. He had said as much to Linda before kissing her on the neck and heading out to Deer Valley, taking a leisurely few minutes to cross the thousand-odd miles between his home and Roy's.

Seconds passed and Wally found his discomfort increasing. His eyes swept the living room a second time, now looking for signs of disruption or forced entry. In the decades Roy had lived here, no one had attempted to bother him, but there was no such thing as real security when you spent your life fighting supervillains.

Wally was taking a wary step toward the kitchen, when he heard a door open near the back of the house and the approach of light footsteps.

"Hi, Wally," Midori said in bright surprise. She removed a pair of wireless ear buds, set them on the mantel and accepted his hug. "Roy didn't tell me you were coming. Do you want some food?"

"Uh, maybe later," Wally said. The word "food" caused his stomach to tighten agreeably. "Roy around?"

"I think he's doing some work outside." Midori leaned past him to peer out the sliding glass doors. "He's right back there." She frowned curiously. "Kicking pinecones."

Even from a distance, Wally could see from Roy's hunched shoulders and his stiff-legged whacks at the pinecones that he was upset. He turned to Midori, who seemed unaware of her lover's mood.

"I'm going to go talk to him," he said. "Why don't you go back to whatever –?"

"I'm doing research," she told him.

That was as surprising as Wally being hungry. He smiled at her. "Your computer is crying out for you," he said. "Don't leave it lonely."

Midori visibly swallowed the impulse to explain that computers did not get lonely. She opened the sliding glass door and called out to Roy that Wally was visiting. Then she squeezed the speedster's hand and ambled back to her office.

Wally was at his friend's side before he could blink. Roy offered him a stiff grin.

"You want a beer?" he asked.

All of Roy's beer was non-alcoholic. "No, thanks," Wally said. "What's up?"

Roy stared back into the desert. "She wants to have a baby."

Wally started to laugh. "I knew it," he said. "Time to put those immeasurable skills to work."

"It's not funny," Roy said with unexpected ferocity. He turned anxiously to Wally. "She wants to get married, wait exactly a year and then start working on a baby. Because she's done a lot of research and that's the scenario that provides a child with the greatest amount of stability."

"Sounds like she's really planned it out," Wally said, trying not to smile at Midori's naïve attempt to map out her life.

"She went out and bought a stack of ovulation kits," Roy said desperately. "She's going to track her cycle down to the minute, so when the time comes, she'll know exactly when we need to –" He lifted his fingers to form quotation marks in the air. "– attempt a conception."

Unwilling laughter burst through Wally's clenched teeth and tears started streaming from his eyes. He was glad he had turned down the beer. It would have been dribbling out of his nose about now.

"S-sorry," he gasped as Roy glared at him. "I'm not –" Wally straightened up and attempted to look soberly at his friend. "No baby."

"No way," Roy said firmly.

"You'd better tell her," Wally said.

"I've been telling her for a month," Roy said. "She doesn't hear me."

"That's not good," Wally admitted.

"No," Roy said, in a voice that was unexpectedly quiet. "Everything was going so great." He shook his head. "I thought maybe this time…" His voice thickened and trailed off.

"It's not entirely unreasonable for a woman Midori's age to want a family," Wally said tentatively. "I mean, it's pretty much the norm, isn't it?"

"Not where she comes from," Roy said, in a tone that suggested that Midori had welshed on some kind of unspoken deal. "On Colu, they make their kids in labs and get professional parents to raise them in dormitories. Midori has no reason to want this."

"But she left Colu," Wally said. "Because that kind of life wasn't for her."

"She didn't have babies in mind when she came here," Roy said.

"She didn't have you in mind when she came here," Wally countered. "But she adapted."

Roy's eyes narrowed resentfully. "You're supposed to be on my side," he said.

"I actually am," said Wally. "I don't want to see you alone again."

A coyote howled from the desert beyond the backyard and Wally's eyes shifted toward the sound, glad for the excuse to look away from Roy's pained face.

"Maybe get her a dog," Wally mumbled. "Let her see how hard it is to take care of a puppy and maybe she'll think twice about a baby." He chanced a sidelong glance at Roy and was relieved to see his friend had regained most of his composure.

Roy snorted. "A dog."

"Get one that sheds," Wally advised as the idea grew on him. "A big, hairy, noisy one that chews your furniture and pees all over your hardwood floors."

"Great idea," Roy said sarcastically. "We'll name him Wally."

* * *

Screams on the grounds of Arkham Asylum were rarely good news, even in the parking lot. Martha's shriek of delight at the sight of her beloved Micro Cooper sent a handful of her coworkers diving behind cars for cover.

"Quiet," Bruce told her as she hurtled into his arms, oblivious to the aggrieved stares of staff members who were now brushing bits of gravel from their knees. "I don't want people noticing me too close to this thing."

"I love you so much," Martha gushed, pressing a series of kisses against his mouth and cheeks. "And I love my car." Her forehead crinkled and she pulled back to study him. "What's wrong?"

Bruce handed her the keys. "I'm anticipating the ride home in the passenger seat."

She looked worried. "What is it?"

Ordinarily, Bruce did not see a downside in Martha's ability to see through him, but he had hoped to enjoy her reaction to getting her car back for a while before they moved on to more serious matters. "We'll talk about it at the restaurant."

"OK," she said nervously. Bruce was surprised to see her hand shake as she fumbled with the keys.

He reached for her wrist. "It's not that big a deal," he said quickly. She looked up at him and he amended. 'It is. But it's not…." He sighed and gestured at the Micro Cooper. "Get in the car."

One of the last things he had fixed on the car was the jammed passenger seat, but even adjusted to its greatest distance from the dashboard, Bruce had to bend his knees to fit into the small compartment. Martha had already shut her door and was looking at him anxiously when he turned to her.

"You're not going to break up with me?" she asked in almost a whisper.

He was completely taken aback and apparently it showed; Martha's face relaxed even before he managed to sputter a denial.

"_No_," he said. "Why would you even –"

"People break up in restaurants," she said, blinking away relieved tears. "And I can tell that you're really stressed out and that it's because of me and – and you're handing me back my car…." She shook her head. "I've been so happy these past months, it's almost scary. I guess I was afraid…. I don't know," she finished lamely.

"I don't think I've ever been happier," Bruce said. He took a deep breath. "Which is why I need to know what you're going to do about next year."

"Next year?" Martha repeated. Relief and understanding flooded her dark eyes. "Because I have to start applying now for any job I'd want to start next fall…."

Bruce nodded. "So… where are you applying?"

She ran her fingertip along the new steering wheel cover, inhaled deeply and said, "I've put together a package for Gotham U." Bruce remembered her remarking several times that the university's medical center had a "nice little unit on sociopathology."

"And where else?" Bruce asked.

Martha shook her head. "I'm putting in my app to GU in early. Let's see what they have to say before I waste a lot of postage applying anywhere else."

"You'll miss the other deadlines," Bruce said, suddenly feeling selfish. Martha hoped her research would eventually put an end to some forms of violent criminal behavior; the long, hard years she had spent in medical school and residency, the Sorbonne and Arkham had all been designed to bring her to the point where she could devote herself to this effort.

"I have a window," Martha said unconvincingly. "If I miss it, I can always try for a staff position at Arkham. Or –" She tried to conceal a grimace. "– the psych ward at Gotham General."

Bruce felt his stomach knotting up. "That's not what you want."

"It won't come to that," Martha assured him. "I'm a good candidate for the spot at Gotham U."

As true as this was, Bruce knew she was taking an enormous chance. "But what if –" He found himself silenced by the warmth of her hand covering his.

Her dark eyes searched his blue ones. "Do you want me to stay in Gotham City?"

Without hesitation, Bruce said, "Yes."

"Then I'm not going to leave," Martha said.

He was going to make it work for her, Bruce thought, as Martha started the ignition, happily remarked upon the quiet hum that had replaced the grinding sound of the old engine, and backed the car out of the parking lot. He shifted legs that were rapidly falling asleep. Gotham University would be lucky to have her, but if that prospect somehow fell through, he would be ready with a back-up plan. Martha's mission was just as important as his own and Bruce was going to make sure that staying with him did not mean that she would have to leave it behind.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _The Flying Grayson_

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

Brilliantly beta-read by arg914. Happy New Year to All!

* * *

He knew it was nothing personal, but Superman always felt slightly offended by the number of children – teen-agers, mostly – who ended up going out as Doomsday on Halloween. The Kryptonian monster was nothing more than a Boogeyman to most of them: Parents of the youngest trick-or-treaters were in diapers when the murderous creature had "killed" the Man of Steel. Superman's demise had turned out to be temporary, but the sight of the pasty rubber mask, with its stringy cotton hair and frozen expression of demented rage, never failed to remind him of the anguish his "death" had caused Lois and his parents.

Halloween night was a mandatory patrol for most costumed crimefighters. Incidents were rare, but children were to be protected, even when the risk was low. It would take only one madman, one ruthless sociopath – or even a self-righteous teen who thought being bullied gave him a license to lash out at the world – to snuff out a dozen tiny lives in an instant – and to send their loved ones on an infinite trek through living hell.

It was an evening Superman took seriously, but it was also one he relished. The streets of Metropolis were alive with children shuffling around in oversized nylon costumes. Trends changed every year, but superheroes were always in fashion. Wally seemed to be the favorite this year. There had been dozens of replica Flashes seeking treats tonight – Clark recalled Linda once saying that she couldn't trust Wally to give out candy because half of it would mysteriously disappear – and a decent number of little men and women of steel. Superman couldn't fly a block without glimpsing youngsters in baggy blue suits and red capes skipping ahead of their doting parents. He always got a kick out of the cheaply-made blonde wigs that invariably slid from the heads of small girls masquerading as his daughter. The occasional sight of a rubber Martian Manhunter mask made his heart tighten in sad nostalgia.

The night had gone well until a few hours past sunset, when he'd noticed a pudgy little Superwoman toddling beside a small, solemn Batman. The girl had eagerly opened her bag of candy and urged her black-clad companion to examine her treasures. Superman had felt himself very close to vomiting.

He wound through a tight cluster of high rise apartments and watched the last of the trick-or-treaters disappear into their homes. A few days earlier, Bruce had called him at work to ask if he could take the Kents to dinner; he would be in Metropolis later in the week. Clark's automatic reply that he and Lois already had plans for that night might have sounded more authentic if he'd given Bruce the chance to say what evening he had in mind.

He wasn't a fool; he knew what the invitation was about. Clark would not allow anyone to steamroll him into having a conversation he did not want to have, about a situation he found too painful and humiliating to think about. He was not going to legitimize this aberrant… relationship… by acknowledging it. It would be over soon; he was surprised that it hadn't ended already. Clark was not sure what it was that had caused his daughter to abandon her ordinarily good judgment when it came to men, but he was sure whatever it was that attracted her to Bruce Wayne could not long survive his usual self-destructive impulses when it came to women.

She would be leaving Gotham next summer anyway. The fellowship was almost over. Her aspirations would bring her next to Metropolis or to McGill University in Montreal or maybe back to the Sorbonne. Superman winced as he remembered his daughter's unfortunate dalliance with her Parisian professor. The thought of Philippe made him reconsider his belief that Martha's recent taste in men was particularly sound.

If Dave had not been killed…. Superman dove low over Metropolis Bay and mournfully remembered the affable young cop who had become like a second son to him. Martha would have been married nearly eight years by now. This… thing… in Gotham City wouldn't be happening.

When the sound of gunshots broke across the breezy night, he was almost relieved by the distraction. Superman's eyes flicked instantly to a warehouse about a mile down the bay, where a pair of police officers huddled behind a sea wall were exchanging shots with a group of masked outlaws as they attempted to flee in a wooden dingy. Superman was hoisting the small boat over his shoulders before the cops were able to reload. He wondered if the lawbreakers had stolen their latex Joker masks, or had just picked them up at a dollar store. They weren't worth what they used to be.

It turned out to be a busy night. North of Midvale, a teen-aged boy amped up on sugar, beer and arrogance attempted for force himself on his date. Superman wasn't gentle about handing him over to the local cops; he had a sore point about this sort of thing. He urged the girl to press charges – and seek counseling – before a fire in a nightclub in Providence, Rhode Island pulled him reluctantly away. He had hoped to speak to the young woman's parents.

There was a break in the action just as fingers of sunlight reached lazily into the gray morning. Superman allowed Clark Kent the luxury of showering quickly and slipping naked into bed with his sleeping wife.

"Mmmm," Lois mumbled as Clark enfolded her in oversized arms. She reached back and ran a hand through his slightly damp hair and smiled without opening her eyes. "Do you want a trick or a treat, little boy?"

"Surprise me," he murmured, pushing a silky strand of hair aside and kissing the back of her neck. After more than thirty years together, she still could.

They woke together a few hours later, still entwined, to the sound of Clay banging around in the kitchen. Lois pushed Clark groggily onto his back and slid on top of him, determined to make the most of this rare time together. The telephone rang.

"Answer it, Clay," she shouted, when their son allowed the phone to ring a second time. Clark laughed. The ringer bleated again.

"He's got his headphones on," Clark told her, after glancing through a couple of walls. Lois made an exasperated face, checked the caller ID and reached for the receiver.

"Hi, Martha," she said, and then, "Oh. That's great." Lois covered the mouthpiece and looked down at her husband. "She traded shifts with one of the other shrinks –" There was a burst of protest from the other side of the receiver. Lois rolled her eyes. "Sorry, Martha," she said, before turning back to Clark. "She traded with one of the other _psychiatrists_ so she could make it to dinner tonight."

Clark smiled. Martha had skipped the last few Sunday dinners in her ongoing effort to catch up on the hours she had missed last spring, when she had been trapped on the desert planet with Parallax. "Tell her Gren will be here," he said.

Martha apparently heard him. "She _knows _Gren will be here," Lois said. "She says she's coming anyway." She listened again, then added delightedly, "She and Lian just got back from breakfast in Rincon Beach. She's bringing flan for dessert."

She suggested their daughter come over a bit earlier; they hadn't seen her in a while.

"Ask her if she's started putting out applications for next year," Clark said.

Lois did so, frowned, and asked, "_One_?

"All right," she said finally. "We'll see you around five."

"She can't come earlier?" Cark asked as Lois set down the receiver.

"No," Lois said. "She has 'some things to do.' "

"Oh," Clark said in a dim voice. "And she's only applied to one research center?"

"Gotham University," Lois said grimly. Her eyes moved across his pensive face. "Dead and buried?"

Clark's questioning eyes flicked up toward hers.

"The mood."

"Sorry," he said, as she shifted back onto the bed and pulled the quilt up around his shoulders.

"Martha's going to be OK," she promised, putting her arms around him. Clark didn't answer. Lois was usually right when it came to their daughter. He just hoped that "OK" meant "away from Gotham City." Soon.

* * *

Wally set Linda down on Roy's porch and did a quick change while they waited for Parker, who had insisted on running the distance alongside his father. The teen had fallen behind as they veered around Colorado Springs, but he had insisted that his parents go on; he would catch up.

A few minutes passed. Linda gave her husband a concerned look.

"Maybe –" Wally started. Linda's cell phone rang. It was Parker.

Where are you?" she asked. She handed the phone to Wally. "He thought he'd take a shortcut. He has no idea where he is."

Wally repeated his wife's question. Parker seemed to be somewhere west of Pueblo.

"You're not too far away," he said. "Take Route 160, then head right when you hit that cattle ranch with the huge cowboy boot –" Parker exploded onto the porch, chest heaving.

"Just needed – Route 160 –" he panted. Looking up at his parents, he asked, "Is Lian here?"

"Don't you dare act like a walking hormone-mobile if she is," Linda warned as Wally pushed open the front door. Parker glowered and followed his parents into the house.

Midori was sitting in the middle of the living room, engaged in deep conversation with a melon-sized ball of golden fluff. She beamed when she saw the Wests, then spoke excitedly to her furry companion.

"Look, RJ," she said, in the kind of animated voice one might use when speaking to a small child. "Uncle Wally and Aunt Linda are here! And Cousin Parker!"

Wally braced himself to be leapt upon. When Roy liberated the puppy from the SPCA three weeks earlier, he had described him to Wally in a phone call as a "wild, shedding, chewing drool factory." He hadn't said much about the dog since then, but Wally had warned his family to expect a less serene brunch than they usually enjoyed at Roy's place.

The puppy did not budge. He simply looked over his shoulder at the guests, unfurled a long yellow tail, wagged it furiously and looked inquiringly at Midori.

"Go say 'hi' to them," she urged.

RJ scrambled to his feet and Wally steeled himself again. But the puppy headed toward the Wests at a calm trot and sat placidly at Linda's feet. Wally noticed with discomfort that the living room was spotless.

"Cool!" Parker said. He dropped onto the floor beside RJ, who immediately rolled onto his back so his new friend could rub his belly.

"He's adorable," said Linda, squatting gingerly beside her son. "What kind of dog is he?"

"He's three kinds of dog," Midori said proudly. "Labrador Retriever, German Shepherd and Golden Retriever."

"Big shedding dogs," Wally said. He inspected the rug and couches and found not a single stray dog hair.

Midori rose from the floor just as Roy stepped through the sliding glass doors with some firewood. He greeted Linda and Parker with perfunctory pleasantness, but cast a dark look at Wally.

"Gonna need another armload," Roy said, tossing the logs into the fireplace. "Come help me."

"Take RJ," Midori called as they walked back into the yard. "He needs to excrete urine. Go with Daddy," she added to the puppy.

"RJ come," Roy said listlessly. The dog scrambled happily after him.

"I thought you were going to name him Wally," Wally said nervously, as Roy led him grimly to the woodpile.

"No," Roy said, and looked directly into Wally's face, as if daring him to laugh. "His name is Roy, Jr. I feel fortunate I got Midori to shorten it to RJ."

He looked down at the dog, who had remained devotedly at his heel during the brief conversation.

"RJ," he said. "Sit." The dog sat and looked up at Roy expectantly.

"Lie down." RJ obeyed.

"Fetch me a stick, please," Roy said tonelessly. RJ raced to the nearest piece of kindling and carried joyfully back to Roy, who tucked it under an arm and glared accusingly at Wally.

"You may now excrete urine," Roy told the dog, who trotted to the farthest corner of the yard to do so.

Flabbergasted, Wally said, "You told me he was a wild, shedding maniac."

"He was," Roy said. "Until Midori got a hold of him."

"But how –?"

"She. Did. Research," Roy said through his teeth. He thrust a pile of firewood into Wally's arms and added, "She came up with a special formula to stop the shedding. Some animal company wants to buy it."

"You'll be rich," Wally said, hoping the thought of additional wealth might mollify his troubled friend.

Roy looked at Wally as though he hadn't heard him. "Dick says I should get Midori to baby-sit Ryand'r. He says that'll put her off babies forever."

Dick and Kory's one-year-old had just started to fly. Lately, Dick had been peppered in oddly-placed bruises that had nothing to do with to his work as Nightwing.

"You going to take him up on it?" Wally asked, as RJ came bounding back to them.

"As soon as possible," Roy replied. He studied Wally with considerably more warmth. "How many bags of candy did you eat last night?"

"Me?" Wally asked innocently.

"It's just that I threw the M&Ms we had left over into the pancake batter," Roy explained. "I don't want you to go into a diabetic coma."

"I wouldn't worry," Wally said as they walked back toward the house. "RJ could probably resuscitate me."

* * *

Martha regretted the opulent breakfast she'd shared with Lian in Puerto Rico nearly as soon as she stepped onto the padded mat in the Batcave's expansive gym. Bruce had warned her not to eat too much – he'd thought the jaunt ill-advised anyway. She was stretching herself too thin, between her arduous hours at Arkham, her work with the League and their nightly patrols. He felt she should have spent the morning sleeping, specifically in his bed with him. But Martha had been feeling guilty about spending so much time apart from her roommate, especially during Lian's crucial first year of recovery. When the redhead had joked recently about subletting Martha's room, there had been an unmistakable undertone of longing in her voice that Martha refused to ignore. She had vowed to spend more time with Lian, who had never allowed anything – even the countless streams of faceless men who had coursed briefly through her life – to interfere with their friendship.

An overlarge breakfast mere hours before a Sunday workout session with Bruce might have not been the best way to express this friendship, Martha thought, as she gazed nauseously up at the Batcave's rocky ceiling. Maybe next time they would go to a movie.

"Get up," Bruce said tonelessly.

He was driven and humorless during their workouts, determined to achieve an impossible perfection, rarely impatient, but just as infrequently satisfied. As they had gotten closer, Martha's initial irritation at his demeanor had given way to an affectionate amusement she was careful not to show. Bruce had not completely recovered from what he had believed for six weeks to be her death. He was training Martha with the intent of keeping her alive.

She knew she was no Robin: With her bracelet suppressing her superpowers, she was an above-average fighter, with endless determination, decent instincts, unremarkable strength and adequate reflexes. During their first few work-outs, she could barely stay on her feet before she'd been swept, kicked, punched, thrown or pinned. She had gotten a lot better, which meant Bruce was pushing her harder.

In spite of her mutinous stomach, Martha did reasonably well during their stick-fighting drills and even better when they were sparring. Then she made the mistake of showing pleasure in her progress by smiling and Bruce had swept her to the mat.

"Your opponent's just killed you," he whispered into her ear as he pinned her wrists against the yielding floor. "OK, he's killed you again. Get up before he kills you a third time." Martha writhed under him, struggling for an opening with characteristic tenacity, but Bruce had trapped her limbs with his much larger body. She was completely immobile and he was intentionally aggravating her feeling of helplessness by upping her personal body count every few seconds. She became frustrated and bit him on the shoulder.

He rolled off of her quickly and for a terrible second she thought she had hurt him. Then she saw the aroused look in his eyes and started to giggle.

"Don't expect all of your opponents to react like this," he said sternly, as she reversed their positions, straddling him and pushing his wrists playfully against the mat.

"I didn't hurt you?" she asked seriously.

"You're wearing a rubber mouthpiece," Bruce pointed out. She expected him to insist that they resume training, but instead he looked thoughtful for a second and offered, "Guardian."

With a sigh of mock exasperation, Martha leaned against the knees Bruce had drawn up against her back. A few weeks earlier, he had cautiously suggested that her crimefighting name might carry too large a burden, reflecting as it did the capabilities of Martha's more powerful father. She needed a moniker suited to her own unique talents, not just a feminized version of Superman.

"That name makes people expect too much of you," Bruce had said. "And it makes you push yourself too hard."

"No one pushes themselves harder than you," Martha protested.

"I stay within my limitations," Bruce had countered. "And if I move past them, it's calculated and with ample safeguards. You just go crashing into bombs."

He had taken pains to emphasize that he was not advocating – as Roy had once characterized it – a rejection of her father and everything he stood for. The last thing Bruce wanted now was further tension between himself and Clark.

The disclaimer had been unnecessary; Martha understood where Bruce's heart had been in suggesting the change. But she couldn't seriously consider giving up her name.

This hadn't stopped him from throwing potential aliases at her whenever he thought of one. Martha had already dismissed Paladin and Star Woman. Guardian was a little better, but she was sure she had heard it before.

"Isn't there a Guardian already?" she asked.

"Not anymore," he said, as he watched her hands disappear under his t-shirt. With a quick twist of his hips, he toppled her onto the mat next to him. "Time to meditate."

"You'd rather sit on a pillow than make wild love to me on the floor of your gym?" asked Martha, feigning hurt.

Bruce rolled next to her and pried the bracelet from her wrist. "Last time we did that, you fell asleep on your cushion."

She considered this. "I could drink some coff–"

The rest of the word was lost in his mouth. He was pinning her again, but this time she felt neither helpless nor frustrated.

* * *

"I think that was very spiritual," Martha said afterwards. Bruce hooked a leg around hers and pulled her close.

"Mm-hmm," he mumbled into her shoulder.

She glanced back at him and asked, "When did you first realize you were attracted to me?"

"We should go upstairs," he said without moving. "Alfred could walk in here at any moment."

It wasn't the first time he'd tried to dodge the question. "Bruce…"

"When do you think?" he asked.

"When you woke me out of my nightmare?" Martha asked, as he started running his fingertips along her arm. "In the arboretum?"

"That's a good guess," Bruce said. "But not even close."

She considered a few possibilities. "When –"

"You only get one guess," he said, leaning around to kiss her temple. Martha turned into him so that they were nose to nose.

"Why won't you tell me?" she asked.

"I'll tell you," he said. He sat up and reached across the mat for her t-shirt. "Just not in this decade." He handed her the shirt and looked around for the remains of his own. In her ardor, Martha had torn it nearly in half. Alfred had been acquiring a lot of dust-rags that way.

"You're just making me more curious," Martha said.

Bruce smiled faintly. "I like to keep an air of mystery about me."

She laughed. "Right. Because other than that, there's no mystery to you at all."

* * *

A crash of alarming volume and duration caused Dick to rush from the front door before he had fully opened it, prompting Roy and Midori to exchange a baffled look as they stepped warily into the foyer. Roy had just started to crane his head into the living room, where he was pretty sure the sound had come from, when he found himself nearly knocked off his feet by one of Dick's older daughters.

"Hi, Mary," he said as the little girl clung ferociously to his waist. In an effort to spare his internal organs, he hoisted her into his arms. "You remember Aunt Midori, don't you?"

With a joyous nod, Mary transferred herself to Midori, who, Roy noted with grim satisfaction, darkened to the shade of a pine needle in reaction to the child's overzealous hug. He truly regretted the torment he and Dick were about to put Midori through, but Roy could see what she could not: It would not be long before she was going to have to choose between him and her desire to have a child. Roy was desperate to be her choice and he was running out of arguments.

Dick limped back into the room, an impish-eyed Ryand'r tucked under one arm. His third daughter, Valiand'r, danced happily by his side as he ran a hand through his rumpled hair and apologized for not properly greeting his guests.

"Thanks for doing this, Midori," he said, as he led them into the living room. Roy noted with equal parts guilt and glee that the room was in shambles and two large bay windows had been hastily boarded up. "I really need a break."

Midori replied eagerly that she would baby-sit for him anytime. Dick fixed her with a jaded stare and pointed to the long list of emergency phone numbers he had affixed to the refrigerator with a magnet.

"Where's Kory?" Midori asked, as a squirming Ryand'r burst out from under Dick's arm and soared straight at Roy's head. The leader of the Justice League missed by seconds being decapitated by a flying baby

Dick looked uneasy. "Oh… she's on a mission with the Outsiders. We don't have to mention this to her. It's sort of like a surprise," he added unconvincingly, at Midori's perplexed look.

"Should we get going?" Roy asked, ducking as Ryand'r did a quick loop through the den and hurtled back toward him, apparently drawn to his red hair like a tiny bull.

Dick nodded and shouted into the basement for his son, John, who now insisted on being called Tamand'r, his Tamaranian middle name. The teen-ager emerged scowling onto the top of the cellar steps. From the sounds exploding out of the basement, Roy guessed he had been engrossed in one of his many videogames.

"I expect you to step in the second the baby becomes too much for Midori to handle," Dick told his son sternly. They turned together toward Midori, whose attempt to gather up a momentarily stationary Ryand'r had left her rubbing a swollen nose.

"That should be about two minutes," Tamand'r groused. "Why do you have to leave? I just got this game."

Dick stepped close to his son and said in a fierce whisper, "You'll help Midori. And you'll call me if there's an emergency."

"What's an emergency?" Tamand'r asked sullenly.

"Injuries," Dick said. He stepped back and turned to Roy. "Let's go."

"Maybe this is a bad idea," Roy said nervously, as Dick backed his Toyota Americana out of the driveway.

Dick shook his head. "Midori'll be OK. John's a good kid. He'll help her out."

"She should have brought her rocket boots," Roy said, as his friend swung the car towards a nearby sports bar.

Dick laughed. "That might have helped."

As they wound their way around the suburban roads, now strewn with crumpled brown leaves, Roy watched his friend become gradually more relaxed.

"You never had this kind of trouble with your other kids," he said, as Dick pulled into a parking spot near a neon bedecked tavern called The End Zone.

"They started flying at a much later age. They could take instruction – and respond to threats," Dick said, adding laconically, "Ryand'r's a prodigy."

"Ah, the mixed blessing of the gifted child," Roy said loftily. Dick shot him a tired smile.

They found a dark, quiet place near the corner of the bar. Their server, a heavy-set middle-aged blond man with a soul patch and a pierced chin, thrust a bowl of tortillas at Dick and noted that he hadn't seen him around for a while.

"The baby's teething," Dick said. "She's kinda hard for the wife to handle by herself."

He ordered a Yuengling Light Lager. Roy asked for a bottle of water.

"No, wait," he said. "I'll have a Coke."

"Living the wild life," Dick teased. He reached for the frosty glass of beer. "You're dead set against this father thing?"

"No way can we both keep working for the League and raise a baby," Roy said. "And that's part of who we are as a couple." He shook his head. "And I know you do it, Dick, but I'm too old to start changing diapers again. And I was a crappy father," he added. "Look at everything Lian's had to go through to finally get herself together."

There was a wet thud as Dick set his glass down. "You were an inspiration to me as a father," he said passionately. "You were younger than John, and yet you did everything you could to make sure Lian was safe and secure and loved. And she _is_ together now.

"If she heard what you just said about yourself, she'd slap your head off," Dick added, pretending not to watch as Roy blinked hard and took a long drink of soda.

They sat together for a while, the silence between them interrupted only by occasional sipping sounds and the tinkle of ice. Finally, Dick said, "The chicken nachos here are –"

They saw the tavern door sailing into the mirror behind the bar before they registered the deafening explosion that sent it there. As glass went flying and patrons started screaming, six armed men stepped into the hole they'd blasted into the wall. One of them held a bazooka.

Roy and Dick dropped behind the bar and exchanged a look of disbelief.

"I can't go out for a drink," Dick said in a frustrated whisper. He sighed. "You don't have your fighting suit?"

"Under my clothes," Roy said. He reached into the pocket of his jeans for his mask. "But I left my toys in the rental car."

"I've got stuff in the trunk," Dick said. "I'll slip out the fire exit and bring us both back something to play with." He was gone before Roy had the first button of his shirt undone.

As deep-throated threats and sobs mingled on the floor of the tavern, Arsenal crawled behind the bar, checked the pulse of the unconscious blond bartender and scouted around for potential weapons. He knew it was vain to feel validated at a time like this, but he couldn't help it: The hand-to-hand, powers-free training he had always insisted upon was designed for just this sort of scenario.

He grabbed a round tray from the fallen server and popped up from behind the bar just long enough to hurl it, Frisbee-like, into the temple of the closest invader. The man went crashing onto a pool table. Arsenal ducked back behind the bar, grabbed a trio of whiskey bottles and leapt over the counter, throwing them, in mid-air, at the robber holding the bazooka and two of his comrades. Only one of them went down, but by the time the remaining two had recovered, Roy had landed on the billiards table. He grabbed a pool cue just as Nightwing swung in through the tavern's plate glass window.

Arsenal took out a third bandit when his head jerked instinctively toward the sound of Nightwing's noisy entrance; only the guy with the bazooka and two of his cohorts were standing now. The resistance Arsenal had offered had distracted them from their weapons. Now all three men pointed their guns at Roy's chest.

_Th-wap! _With a snap of his wrist, Nightwing, who had still not touched ground, released three poly-carbon escrima sticks; two of them made crunching sounds as they drove into the skulls of the bazooka bearer and one of his Uzi-carrying companions. Arsenal ducked as the last outlaw standing opened fire. Nightwing, still airborne, finished him almost offhandedly with a thrusting heel kick to the jaw.

"Where's the weapon you promised me?" Roy asked with mock petulance as they met in the middle of the tavern floor. Nightwing reached into the back of his belt and handed him a small titanium crossbow.

"The pool cue seemed to do the trick for you," he said, looking around as disheveled diners started crawling out from under their heavy wooden tables. "Anybody hurt?" As if on cue, sirens began to howl in the distance.

"Bartender's out, but his pulse was strong and his pupils are OK," Roy said. "He probably got hit by the very edge of the door. Or he fainted," he added, shrugging.

As they headed over to check on the unconscious server, Nightwing commented, "You know, this was still a walk in the park compared with an evening with Ryand'r."

Arsenal stopped dead. "We'd better go back."

A quartet of police officers, weapons drawn, stormed through the wide, asymmetrical hole that had replaced the tavern door. They gazed around the room at the unconscious felons and battle-shocked patrons and slowly lowered their guns.

"We can't," Nightwing said. "We'll to have to go back to the station with these guys and give our statements. Don't worry," he added. "John hasn't called me yet. That means no one's been injured or they're all unconscious."

Roy knew he was kidding; John was almost as strong as Kory and she had nowhere near as much trouble with Ryand'r as Dick did. Still, as he led paramedics to the downed bartender, Roy hoped that Midori was neither harmed nor overly disheartened by her inability to handle a Tamaranian baby. He hadn't wanted her to see stars, just the light.

* * *

It was close to three in the morning when Dick turned the Americana back into his driveway. The house was mostly dark; one light shone from the basement window, another from Mary's second-story bedroom. Roy braced himself as Dick pushed open the door and guardedly flicked on the foyer lights. The house was eerily quiet. Dick hurried into the living room and hit the light switch there. His eyes swept across the room and his face assumed a mystified look. Roy stepped forward and saw that the room, which had been a disaster area when he and Dick had left for the tavern, seemed almost as neat as it had during Ryand'r's pre-flight days.

"I hope this doesn't mean Kory's home," murmured Dick. "She'll kill me if she finds out we left Midori alone with the baby."

A creak from behind sent them both whirling toward the basement. Tamand'r, his saucer-sized eyes bleary, peered at them from the top step.

"Did you guys leave yet?" he asked.

Dick said flatly, "You _didn't_ leave Midori up here by herself."

"She didn't ask for any help," Tamand'r protested.

"Is mom home?" Dick demanded.

"No," said Tamand'r, as if his father was senile. "Mom's fighting aliens with the Outsiders."

Dick shot Roy a look of pure dread, then ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time in his haste to find what was left of Midori. Roy vaulted after him, nearly knocking him over when Dick stopped in the doorway of Mary's bedroom, then twisted around, stupefied, to gape at Roy. They turned together to stare at the small bed.

Mary and Valiand'r were curled blissfully around Midori, who dozed serenely on an array of fluffy pink pillows. Ryand'r slumbered contentedly against her chest.

"What do you prefer?" Dick asked after a long while. "Daddy or Papa?"

**

* * *

Next Chapter**: _The holiday before Christmas_

* * *


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

Thankful as can be for arg914's astonishing beta-reading skills!

* * *

…_becoming colder now… the ground frozen and desiccated … harder to dig the graves, their_ _graves…. Some of them could not feel it… the bitter air, the vengeful winds… they pretended… wore their lies: cumbersome garments they did not need… he would let them for now… let them keep pretending…_

_When he was done, they would all feel the cold._

* * *

Richard Adrienne stared at his intercom, raised his eyes briefly to his closed office door, then returned his gaze to the phone.

"Dr. Kent," he repeated softly.

"Yes, Doctor," his secretary. "She wants to know if you're free."

Adrienne looked next at the small, replica antique clock on his desk. He had been ten minutes from escaping the asylum for a four-day Thanksgiving holiday few of his subordinates would enjoy. The prospect of an encounter with Martha Kent made him immediately feel less thankful: Beyond the inoffensive, even respectful countenance she was always careful to wear in his presence, he could see the unspoken taunt reflected in her onyx eyes: _My boyfriend kicked your ass._

The director had done what he could to minimize these meetings – he had re-vamped the holiday roster so that she was no longer working, as he had originally mandated, every one of the winter holidays. She was now off for most of them – and, in response to a last-minute vacation request – the week between Christmas and New Year's as well. Adrienne did not know what else she could want from him, especially at ten minutes to five on the day before Thanksgiving.

"I've got a few minutes," he said resignedly into the intercom. A moment later, Martha opened the door and tapped deferentially on the side of the doorframe. Adrienne by then was on his feet, making a big production of loading up his briefcase; he barely paused in these efforts to offer her a curt nod that was his permission for her to approach his desk.

"Hi, Dr. Adrienne," Martha said tentatively. "I won't take up too much of your time."

He made a show of glancing at her face without making contact with her eyes and said evenly, "What can I do for you, Dr. Kent?"

"Well, it's about next year."

Adrienne froze, his fist clutching the bottom of a thick manila folder. _Please, no_, he thought. If she asked to be considered for a staff position, he would start typing up his own résumé that evening.

"Next year?" He managed a neutral tone, but barely.

"Yes, sir. I was…. I've been thinking about Harvey."

"Harvey," Adrienne repeated. He sat his briefcase on his leather chair and gave her his full attention.

"I'd like to keep treating him," Martha explained. "I was wondering if there was a way… some kind of arrangement we could make… so I could stay on board as his doctor."

Carefully, Adrienne restated Martha's request, "You want to continue treating Two-Face. As a consultant. On a – a part-time basis?"

Martha made a hopeful face. "Is that possible?"

Adrienne picked up his briefcase and set it onto the top of his desk. "I don't know." He continued stuffing the stiff leather bag with files. "I'll have to look into it."

"I'd really appreciate it," Martha said. She seemed a little disappointed he hadn't supplied an instant "yes," something Adrienne was neither authorized – nor eager – to do.

"I take it this means you expect to find work in Gotham City," he said, zipping up the overfilled briefcase with some difficulty.

"I hope to," Martha said. "Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Dr. Adrienne. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving." She started backing out of the office.

"Wait a minute," Adrienne said. Martha stopped and looked up at him. "Put your request in writing."

She flashed him a grateful smile. "I'll do that this weekend. Thanks."

He reached into the bottom drawer of his desk as soon as the door closed behind her. His predecessor, Devon Persky, had left a large bottle of Tums there. Adrienne had once considered the antacids a symbol of Persky's weakness, but the bottle was close to empty now; the director had to dig a thick finger into its circular mouth to root out a pair of tablets. The idea of having Martha Kent around even part-time made his stomach roil, but he wasn't going to be the one to run afoul of her overprotective sugar daddy. Maybe he would misplace the request, Adrienne thought, as he reached for his overcoat. Or maybe she wouldn't manage to find a job in Gotham City after all.

* * *

As the heavy door unsealed with a slight hiss, Martha saw Harvey give a slight jerk. He seemed to be jumpier lately, which troubled her; on top of that, she had thought she'd heard him muttering himself.

"Were you… talking to someone?" she asked, failing to make it sound like a casual question. _So what if he was?_ Martha chided herself. He spent 90 percent of his life alone in a small cell.

"I was just cursing you out," Harvey said. "You're late."

She nodded. "I'm sorry. Had to go talk to Adrienne. Make it up to you, though."

Her eyes glinted; his narrowed. She was going to get a lecture, Martha thought mischievously, as she escorted Harvey to her office. He would scold her before he enjoyed the fruits of her little… infringement.

He walked almost immediately to her window. It was only during their sessions that he could see outside. He stared at a cluster of young trees; their branches whipped in the wind as it stripped away the few remaining leaves from their battered limbs.

Still watching him, Martha squatted by her chair and touched a button. The loud plastic click – and the whirr that followed – caused Harvey to whirl toward her. She grinned. He was wearing the precise look of disapproval and anticipation she had come to expect.

"You're going to blow every circuit in the building," he protested as she straightened up beside the small microwave oven.

"Probably not," Martha said cheerfully. Most of Arkham's ancient electrical system had been replaced after Sean Fray used his technopathic powers to break out the Joker a year and a half earlier. The asylum's decrepit technology hadn't been able to survive the strain.

Harvey stared down through the small window at the revolving turntable.

"I'll be away tomorrow," Martha explained, pulling a napkin and some plastic ware out of her filing cabinet. "So I thought we'd do Thanksgiving a little early."

His eyes moved back to her face, a blend of doubt and gratitude and he moved toward the other side of her desk, where she'd set out the utensils and a makeshift placemat of manila file folders.

"I thought you didn't eat meat. Or buy it," said Harvey, sniffing the air suspiciously. There was a _ding_ and then Martha was popping the door open and plopping a thick cardboard plate of steamy stuffed turkey, yams and mixed vegetables onto the desk.

Had it been anyone else, Martha would have tried to pass the dish off as turkey, but honesty in the extreme was still the anchor of her bond with Harvey. He had made a lot of gains in the years she had treated him, but she was not willing to chance losing his trust over a tiny fib to get him to try a new food.

"It takes exactly like it," she said. "But it's vegetable based."

"It tastes exactly like it," Harvey repeated cynically, stabbing with his fork at a slab of what looked and smelled like the real thing. "How would you know? Have you ever _had_ real turkey?"

"My mom says it does," Martha said.

"Mothers lie," Harvey announced, causing the psychiatrist in Martha to perk up. He chewed a forkful of pseudo-turkey cautiously before pronouncing, "It's OK."

Martha smiled and slid a cold iced tea across the desk. He plowed halfway through the meal, absorbed in the vivid tastes and textures that prison food did not provide, before commenting, "I think our relationship is based on food."

"Go on," Martha said. Harvey raised his eyebrows at her, the brow on the unblemished side of his face lifting slightly higher than its scarred twin.

"This is hardly a psychological breakthrough," he said. "The first time we met, you brought me a pizza. You've been plying me with food ever since."

A blast of wind pummeled the window. Harvey looked past Martha at the branches flailing just beyond the thick, mesh-enforced rectangle of glass.

"I remember this being the ugliest time of year," he said. "The little corpses of late-summer flowers toppled over in gardens. Everything green turned dull brown."

Troubled by his description of dead flowers as "little corpses," Martha said, "Weather-wise, it's not my favorite time of year."

"The ground's so hard and dry," Harvey said, his eyes distant. "I had a pet once, a guinea pig, who died around this time. I was a little kid." He blew a soft, derisive laugh between scarred lips. "I wanted to bury him, have a real funeral, but I couldn't get a shovel into the ground. Couldn't dig his grave."

He glanced over at Martha. "This is also not a breakthrough," he said. "I'm just remembering the weather."

"What did you do?" Martha asked.

Harvey sat for a moment, remembering. "My mom suggested we build one of those Celtic graves – you know, where the body's covered with a pile of rocks?"

"I think it's called a cairn," Martha said.

"Whatever it's called," Harvey said, "I remember standing there, shivering in the cold, while my mom delivered this eulogy for my guinea pig. She meant well, but it was too long. When she finished, I ran inside and she made me a mug of hot chocolate and I asked for a dog next time."

"You get one?" Martha asked. He shook his head and looked down at his empty plate.

She felt a surge of pity for Harvey the boy and fought the impulse to tell the damaged man he had become about her hopes to stay on at Arkham as his doctor. She had no idea how likely it was that the board would approve her request and she didn't want to set him up for disappointment. Maybe she would know by Christmas; it would be the only gift Martha could offer him, other than another illicit meal.

"My friend just got a dog," Martha said. "Her boyfriend thinks it will stop her from wanting a baby."

Harvey snorted. "If he thinks that, he probably shouldn't reproduce."

She asked him how he was sleeping, if he was still as jumpy as he'd reported being lately and how he felt his meds were working. Martha had wanted to taper off on a few of them; she thought they were behind his restlessness, but Harvey resisted any efforts to reduce the drug regime he believed was keeping him sane. It was twenty after six – long after their session had been scheduled to end – before she rose to take him back to his cell. As she reached for his plate, Harvey laid a scarred hand over hers.

"I don't the right to have anything to be thankful for," he said, his eyes fixed on the top of her desk. "But I do. And I am."

Martha turned her hand so that her fingers clasped his. "You're not the only one who's –"

"Who's going to bribe me with food when you're gone?" Harvey interrupted. He hated these sentimental moments, even when he started them.

"They're not bribes," said Martha, a little stung.

"I know," Harvey said. He tossed the plate into her wastebasket. "A bribe would have included pumpkin pie."

As she left him in his cell and walked back to her office to get her things, Martha methodically sorted her own guilt and sentimentality from the substance of the session. Harvey was overly dependent on the brief time they spent together each day; she had known that for a long time. It was not a healthy situation, but she saw no way to encourage him to develop other outlets – ones that might bring more balance to his life – when he was locked in a high-security cell.

Martha had tried the previous spring to get Devon Persky to agree to move Harvey to a less restricted cellblock. It had been a dozen years since he had committed an act of violence, she had argued. And he hadn't attempted a break-out since she'd talked him down from the watchtower at Gotham University on her second day at Arkham.

Persky had balked; he found the idea of allowing a mass murderer of Harvey's infamy into the asylum's general population unthinkable. If he escaped and killed again… the_ publicity_…. Martha had planned to wait a few months and then ask Persky to reconsider, but before she'd had the chance, she had disappeared, presumed murdered by Parallax, and Harvey had tried to escape to attend her funeral.

There was no point in appealing to Adrienne, a man who still referred to Harvey as Two-Face, she thought, as she reached into her pocket for her vibrating cell phone. She would have to think of something else.

"Hey, Alfred," she said. "I was just on my way out." She smiled. "Cranberry sauce? Sure. Anything else I can get for you?"

* * *

The wind bucked stubbornly against the window of the darkened bedroom, as if driven to break through the sturdy glass. Lulled by the sound even as it stirred him, Bruce hunched under the thick blanket, groggily realized his bed was not as warm as it had been, and rolled toward the side of the bed he had ceded to Martha.

She was not there; he realized this even as he looped a lazy arm where she had lain and contacted the edge of the bed instead. Clarity seeped into his sleep-clouded consciousness and he remembered her wriggling out from his loose embrace and telling him she was going to help Alfred. The old man had insisted on putting together a Thanksgiving dinner that would feed an army, despite the fact that it would consist only of himself and Bruce. Alfred had ignored protests from both Bruce and Martha that this was unnecessary; the previous year he had been recovering from surgery and was for the first time in fifty-odd years unable to provide Bruce with a home-cooked holiday meal. Apparently this had haunted the elderly butler to the point of wild overcompensation.

Bruce's eyes found the nightstand clock and he lurched up in the bed. It was nearly three in the afternoon. He dragged his hands over his face and fumbled in the dark for his pajama trousers. Martha would be leaving in half an hour to drop Lian off at Roy's before joining her own family for Thanksgiving. He had hoped to spend more time with her. They would not see each other again until Friday night.

On his way to the kitchen, he noticed that the dining room table had been set for two. Martha had done it; Alfred folded the napkins differently and she couldn't tell the difference between a salad fork and a dinner one. As soon as she left, Bruce knew, Alfred would rush to rectify these unbearable errors.

At least Martha had been allowed to set the table, Bruce thought, as he pushed through the kitchen door. Alfred still refused to let him help out, though whether from an ingrained sense of station, or distrust in Bruce's ability to place a soup spoon, he was not sure.

"…believe people would miss Thanksgiving with their families to camp out for Black Friday?" Martha was asking the old man, as she sprinkled grated lemon peel on the whipped cream topping of a blueberry lemon pie.

"I take it they're spending the holiday in a jail cell instead?" Alfred asked.

"Just the guy who threw his rival for the number one spot in line through a plate glass window," Bruce said. Batman had seen to the man's imprisonment while Superwoman rushed his bloodied victim, a slight woman in her thirties, to Gotham General.

Martha stepped around the kitchen island and threw her arms around his neck; she smelled of lemons and sweet basil.

"You should have woke me," he said, as she floated down to the floor and leaned her head against the lattice of ropy scars crisscrossing his chest.

"You were tired," Martha said. She led him to a kitchen chair and settled onto on his lap.

"I'll miss you." She looked up at Alfred, who, having failed to suppress a smile at this display of intimacy, turned his face toward the refrigerator. "Both of you."

She added wistfully, "Maybe next year, we can all have dinner together."

The Kent and Wayne households sharing Thanksgiving dinner. Bruce wondered if that would ever happen.

"You shall be with us in spirit," Alfred said. He shuffled away from the refrigerator, an enormous golden pie, brimming with cherries, clutched between his withered hands.

"I hoped you might find this little offering not totally inappropriate for your mother's table," he said to Martha, who was regarding the pie with something like lust. "You may, of course, wish to say that you baked it yourself."

"Yes, because she would so believe that," said Martha, rising from Bruce's lap to give Alfred a hug. "Of course I'll tell her it's from you.

"You're one of the things in my life I'm most thankful for," she added. "Just that you're still with us after last year…." She cut herself off as the horror of being the subject of this emotional outburst surged across Alfred's mortified face.

Bruce worked his lips against a smile and rose to rescue the embarrassed butler. He slung an arm around Martha's neck and pressed a kiss to her temple.

"I'm going to get dressed," he said. _Come with me_, he added silently, slanting an unspoken invitation into her eyes.

Martha looked tempted, but said to Alfred, "Do you need any more help down here?"

"None at all," he assured her.

"I'm going to help Bruce pick out a shirt for tonight," she told him, managing neither the straight face the lie required, nor her efforts to repress a blush.

"Very good," Alfred answered gravely. He tottered toward the kitchen island for a roll of aluminum foil.

* * *

She was almost an hour late leaving. Martha made apologetic phone calls to Lian and her parents and promised that she was on her way. She told her mother that she was bringing homemade cherry pie. This did not seem to diminish Lois' annoyance.

"But wait 'til she tastes it," she said to Bruce as they trudged into the manor's vast backyard. It was nearly dark now. The cold bit at his fingers and ears as he handed Martha a paper shopping bag containing the pie and several other dishes Alfred had put together while they were upstairs.

"If they ask you about us, call me," Bruce said. He didn't want her facing that conversation alone.

Martha nodded, then shook her head. "They won't," she said.

He watched the wind whip her hair about her unguarded, slightly melancholy face and stepped in to kiss her. Her cheek was warm against his hand, and her mouth lit his numb, chapped lips and then she was stepping back, seeking clearance, as she automatically scouted the empty estate.

"Martha," Bruce said as she glanced upward in quick preparation for her launch into the sky. Her eyes fell back to his. "You know what I'm thankful for."

She smiled and the traces of sadness scattered in the late November wind. He thought he might have been kissed at super-speed: There was a soft heat against his mouth and she was gone.

* * *

"I'm starving," called out Lian as she burst through the door of her childhood home. Roy looked up from the open kitchen, unsmiling, as Martha trailed her friend inside.

"Sorry," she said contritely to Roy.

He shrugged. "It's all right. Wally's crew is late. No one knows where Barry is."

"Glad I'm not the only wayward superhero child," Martha said. She looked down the hallway toward the back of the house. "Where's the dog?"

"RJ," Roy said in a neutral voice. There was a tinkle of metal tags as the dog padded into the living room.

Martha dropped to her knees to rub the dog's ears. "He's so cute!" she cooed.

"He's so _huge_," Lian said. "What happened to him?" In three weeks, the dog had tripled in size.

"He ate," Roy said listlessly.

The women exchanged a worried look. Martha strode into the kitchen to give Roy a hug.

"You're probably on _her_ side," he muttered into her shoulder.

"I'm not," Martha said. "I'm on the side of everyone being happy. Where is 'her' anyway?" she added.

"In the shower," Roy said. "She'll be out in a few minutes. Am I being a jerk?" he asked.

Martha gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I hope not." She added reluctantly, "I'm sorry – I can't wait. I'm really late for my parents'. Please tell Midori I wish her a happy Thanksgiving."

She headed towards Metropolis feeling anxious and a little depressed. Roy and Midori's relationship had seemed perfect to her once; now it looked like it was falling apart. Martha had not seen Roy so miserable since the dissolution of his second marriage.

And she missed Bruce and Alfred. The holidays meant little to Bruce, other than the unique way they impacted on his nightly patrols, but to Martha they were an opportunity to bask in the nearness of her loved ones. Last year, she had brought Josh to her family's Thanksgiving table and the Kents had welcomed him. She and Bruce had been together longer now and she loved him as she had never loved anyone, but there had been no chance of her parents extending him a similar invitation. Martha understood their reasons for disapproving of their relationship, but she was convinced that if they saw how good he was to her, how good they were _together_, that they might be willing to give it a chance. She found her father's bizarre pretense that the relationship did not exist unnerving. She had never known him to refuse to talk about anything before.

Lois was a different story, Martha reflected, as she carefully adjusted Alfred's care package so the dogged winds over Pittsburgh would do it no harm. Evidently, her mother had been enlisted to join in Clark's silence, but the effort of it was driving her crazy. Formerly innocuous motherly questions, like "How are you?" or "What's new?" were now filled with pregnant expectation. Lois had twice attempted to send Clay to Gotham City on a thinly veiled reconnaissance mission, but Martha's brother had cheerfully announced that his policy in the event of such a visit would be "what happens in Gotham stays in Gotham" and she had given up. Clay had, in fact, been to see his sister, under the guise of taking a trip to Boston, and had stayed at Wayne Manor.

It was Clay who spotted Martha as she glided onto the Kents' rooftop garden and slipped through the sliding glass door that led into the living room.

"The pie's here!" he shouted. He snatched the bag from Martha and unloaded its contents onto the set table. "Oh, God, it looks good. Did Alfred make it?" Martha nodded uneasily as her parents emerged from the kitchen.

"I'm so sorry I'm late," she told them hurriedly, as Clay pulled out a plastic container, ripped off the lid and declared, "Banana pudding!"

"That's all right," Clark said, giving his daughter a one-armed hug. "I just got back myself."

Before Martha could ask where Superman's duties had taken her father on Thanksgiving evening, Clay whimpered, "Sweet potato casserole."

Lois scrutinized Martha and said "You look like you just got out of bed."

Martha ran a self-conscious hand through her hair. "Flying a couple thousand miles in a windstorm will do that to you," she said as she tugged her powder-blue hoodie down around the waistband of her jeans and avoided her mother's sharp eyes.

"Who cares what she looks like?" Clay said as he gazed lovingly at Alfred's handiwork. "Look at this pie. Let's eat so I can have some."

* * *

By the time the Kents sat down to dinner, Bruce and Alfred were halfway through theirs. Bruce had seen as soon as he had returned from the yard that the elderly butler was tired; the day's preparations, even with Martha's help, had taken a lot out of him. While he knew better than to ask Alfred to let him do the serving, Bruce did talk the old man into moving the place settings into the kitchen. Alfred readily agreed; it gave him the opportunity to seamlessly undo Martha's transgressions with his cutlery.

"If I may say so," Alfred said as he sipped contentedly at a small glass of after-dinner sherry. "It seems to me that we have more to be thankful for than we have in years."

They were both alive, thought Bruce as he gazed across the table at this oldest companion. So was Martha. The crime rate in Gotham continued to fall: Alfred's behind-the-scenes contributions to this effort were far from insignificant. Bruce doubted the old man was referring to any of these things.

"You must be pretty happy," Bruce said. "Having achieved your goal of bringing Martha and me together."

The elderly butler blinked rheumy eyes at him and asked, "Achieved my goal?"

"Well, yeah," Bruce said. He reached for a glass of water and frowned quizzically at Alfred.

The old man allowed his gaze to sweep the area around their chairs. "I see no children running around this table," he said evenly.

Bruce set down the glass with a bang, nearly choking on a mouthful of water. Alfred, who had apparently expected this disclosure to startle the younger man, looked surprised when Bruce then gave a short laugh.

"I told her," he said. "I told her that was part of your master plan."

"You've discussed this?" Alfred asked.

"With what's going on with Roy and Midori, how could we not?" Bruce asked.

"And you've decided?" the old man asked, with poorly disguised eagerness.

"Not to get a big hairy dog," Bruce said.

Alfred glowered at him with narrowed, reproachful eyes.

"I want to talk to you about something else," Bruce said abruptly. He drummed tense fingers against the side of his water glass.

"When you told Dick about Martha," he asked. "Did you tell Tim?"

The butler hesitated. "Not immediately," he said. "There was the complication of Miss Martha's friendship with Miss Harper. I was concerned that Master Tim would be reluctant to accept her."

Bruce nodded. "So the first time Tim heard about Martha was..."

"When you were in the hospital." Near death from what the media had described as a suicide attempt triggered by his grief over a presumably murdered Martha.

Sighing, Bruce said, "I guess that explains it."

Alfred peered questioningly at him.

"He's been checking up on her," Bruce said.

He had assumed the old man would be as offended as he was, but Alfred merely asked, "And this surprises you?"

"Of course it does," Bruce said. "This is Martha we're talking about."

"Did you not investigate Miss Kia when Master Tim announced their engagement?" Alfred asked.

Bruce sat back in his chair. "That was different. He had just come out of a nightmare relationship with Lian," he said. "I wanted to make sure he was using the right head this time."

Alfred raised a skeptical eyebrow and stated dryly, "And your taste in women has been exemplary up until now."

He had a point. "It's gotten better," Bruce offered.

"Much better," Alfred agreed.

* * *

The Wests, having given up on their undependable older son, arrived at Roy's shortly after Midori emerged from the shower to offer Lian a dull hello. As they ate, Roy, Linda and Parker argued amicably about football, with Wally occasionally interjecting a comment that elicited a charitable pat on the hand from his wife and a groan of embarrassment from Parker. Midori, sitting quietly next to Roy, kept sad yellow eyes to her plate, looking up only once, to thank Lian for complimenting her impressive achievements with RJ.

Iris didn't know Midori well, but she could not recall her being so withdrawn. She leaned toward Lian and whispered, "What's wrong?"

Lian moved so that she and Iris were shoulder to shoulder. "Later," she mouthed.

Iris nodded. She had spent the last few Thanksgivings with her boyfriend Doug's family. Doug had turned out to be a sleazy opportunist – Iris had caught him feeding information about her family to a tabloid – and they had broken up. She was now becoming pleasantly reacquainted with Lian, who had once been like an older cousin to her.

Barry showed up halfway through what had eased into a marginally comfortable evening. He leaned over his sister to grab the last drumstick and chomped away at it, still standing, while he explained that he was squeezing them all in between an earlier dinner with his current girlfriend and a later one with his "buds."

Iris gave him a disgusted look. He smiled back at her and zipped into Parker's seat the moment the teen-ager got up to get a dinner roll from the other side of the table.

"Hey!" Parker protested, as Barry took his coveted place next to Lian.

"So how are you, Lian?" Barry asked. He propped a chin on his fist and gazed at her suggestively.

"Celibate," she replied cheerfully.

Barry hastily returned the chair to his outraged brother.

"I think it's nice that you're waiting for the right person," the smitten youngest West assured Lian. Iris clamped her jaws together in an effort not to snicker.

Roy and Wally had just gotten up to clear the table for dessert, when Midori suddenly looked across the table at Linda and blurted, "Are _you_ sorry you had any of your babies?"

Wally's hand shot under the Mikasa serving tray as it dropped from Roy's hands. The room was enveloped in stifling silence.

Linda's eyes shifted from Midori's pleading face to Roy's crimson one, then moved to catalog each of her children. Her gaze rested longest on Barry, who cocked a jaunty eyebrow at her.

Finally, Linda turned back to the half-eaten dinner roll that she had unwittingly torn in half. "No," she said, sparing herself an extended interrogation by shoving a large piece of biscuit into her mouth. Midori aimed a look at Roy that seemed to suggest that this settled everything.

Iris felt the bump of Lian's shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

Nodding, she reached for Lian's wrist. A moment later, their chairs were empty.

* * *

Once they'd settled around the table, Martha felt herself start to relax. As Clark passed her the same brand of imitation turkey she'd shared with Harvey, she realized that the room felt a little larger than usual and immediately realized why.

"Where's my other little brother?" she asked.

"Gren has monitor duty," Clark replied, adding, "I don't think he likes it when you call him that."

_**You**__ don't like it when I call him that_, Martha thought. She reached for the sweet potato casserole and listened absently as her mother brought the talk back to the usual subject.

"Did Clay tell you he's up for two Underwood awards?" Lois asked. Martha thought hard and concluded that this particular journalism prize came in the form of a statuette shaped like a typewriter. There were a dozen of them in her parents' study.

Martha turned to her brother. "Yay!" she said pleasantly.

"Like you care," Clay said, intentionally elbowing her as he reached for the stuffing. "Like you even take the rubber band off your newspapers."

"I do," Martha protested. "Care, I mean."

The next half hour was spent analyzing the articles in much the way Martha had seen autopsies performed in medical school. She spent most of the time wondering how she was going to fix things for Harvey, and whether Batman was out on patrol yet.

At some point, the focus of the conversation must have changed. Martha was scraping at her plate when she realized everyone at the table was looking at her.

"Huh?" she asked.

Lois, who was clearly repeating herself, asked, "Where else have you applied for next year?"

Martha had hoped this subject would not come up. She lobbed a wad of banana pudding onto her plate and spoke to a soggy vanilla wafer. "I told you. Gotham University."

For seconds, the only sound in the room was Clay's fork, as it drove through a large piece of Alfred's cherry pie and banged enthusiastically against his china plate.

"What if you don't get accepted there?" asked Clark, struggling to keep the edge out of his voice.

Martha shrugged. "I may apply elsewhere," she said, largely for her parents' benefit. "I just haven't gotten around to it."

"You'd better get around to it soon," Lois said. "You're running out of time, aren't you?"

She had already run out of time to apply to the Sorbonne. The deadlines for McGill and Met U were approaching quickly. As Martha fumbled for a graceful way to change the subject, she caught Clay helping himself to another oversized piece of pie.

"Hey," she said, grabbing his wrist and redirecting the slice onto her own plate. "That's not just for you."

More to divert the conversation than to generate a real discussion, she added, "So what do you think my fighting name would be if it wasn't Superwoman?"

Lois set down her fork. "You're thinking of changing your name?"

"No," Martha said quickly. "I was just –"

"To _what_?" asked Lois, unable to restrain herself. "Rob–"

Clark interjected, "I think that's a _great_ idea."

Three astonished faces swung toward him.

"Dad," said Martha, shaking her head. "I'm not –"

"I don't see anything wrong with Superwoman," Lois said resolutely. She had named the mysterious flying man who eventually became her husband when he first appeared in Metropolis. By association, this put her hand in the creation of her daughter's moniker.

"I think you should consider it," Clark said, latching onto the idea while ignoring its obvious source. He leaned forward and added, "Pave your own way, just like you did by becoming a doctor."

Clay pumped his fist into the air. "Step out of that shadow, girl!" He froze in the face of his mother's incensed stare and slowly lowered his hand.

"I'm not going to change my name," Martha repeated. She looked accusingly at her father. "And it's not going to get me killed."

She had nailed him; Clark, who was not much better at hiding the truth than Martha, took the container of sweet potato casserole he had been steadfastly ignoring and piled the remainder onto his plate.

"Just keep an open mind," he said, poking at the lumpy orange mound with his fork.

With a pointed look she managed to aim at both of her parents simultaneously, Martha said, "That's good advice."

It was ironic, she thought, as a volatile silence gave way to Clay's announcement that he wanted to change _his_ name, possibly to Scoop Writewell, that her father and her lover were unknowingly united in at least one belief: As her brother had so glibly put it, Superman's shadow was not the safest place to stand.

* * *

A near-full moon and a brilliant field of stars illuminated the beach of the small Mexican fishing village; the rest of the small town was swathed in peaceful darkness. As she and Lian wove carefully through a sprinkling of rocks that separated the sand from its earthen neighbor, Iris thought she could hear the tinkle of music in the not too far off distance.

"This is _so_ much better," Lian moaned as a succession of waves crashed against the shrinking shoreline. She pulled off her shoes and socks and tilted her face toward the buttery moon.

"It was getting kind of tense over at your dad's place," Iris admitted. She bent to pick up a smooth shell, noticed a crack along its edge and pitched it into the tide.

"I hope they don't break up," Lian said. "Midori's the best thing that's ever happened to my father."

Iris glanced at her as they moved along the shoreline. "You think they might?"

"I don't know," Lian said. "I wouldn't mind having a little brother or sister, but a baby's something both people have to want. And I can understand why my father doesn't."

They trudged companionably along the coastline for a while, catching up on the years Iris had spent at college and then in St. Louis with Doug. She mentioned that she was thinking of moving back to Central City.

"How about the League?" Lian asked. "Think you might join?"

"Maybe," said Iris. "Think I'd fit in?"

"Of course you would," Lian said, frowning at the sound of an abrupt crunching noise that seemed to be coming from the ocean. "You're a legacy like –."

Shouts exploded through the tranquil salt air and suddenly the beach was neither empty nor silent. Men burst out of a small cantina Iris had barely noticed and scrambled up the shoreline.

"What do you think the chances are that we're going to end up having a peaceful evening?" Iris asked warily as frantic villagers pushed passed them.

"Just about zero," Lian said. She grabbed a nearby man by the arm and asked. "What's going on?"

The man fumbled desperately for the English words. "The ship _grande_ – for fishing – it falling."

"It's _sinking_?" Lian asked. She looked urgently at Iris and saw that her companion had already costumed up.

"Hang on tight," Blitz advised as Lian threw an arm around her shoulder and they sped toward the imperiled ship. "Walking on water is only a miracle when you don't fall on your butt."

They returned to Deer Valley two hours later, drenched and reeking of fish.

"Eew," said Parker, looking up from where he sat on the floor, playing with RJ. "What do you smell like?"

Iris rolled her eyes. "Don't ask," she said. She glanced over at the couch, where her father sat tensely beside their subdued hosts.

Linda had leapt up to seize her coat the moment the younger women walked through the door. She studied the dripping duo for a moment, then strode over to pull a strand of seaweed from Lian's hair.

Turning to her husband, Linda asked, "Do we want to know?"

"I don't think we do," replied Wally. "Try to keep downwind of us on the way home, OK, Iris?"

* * *

He had not meant to start his patrol so early, but once Alfred lay down for what he insisted would be "a brief nap," Bruce had not known what else to do with himself. He'd managed to convince the elderly butler to leave the dishes for later only by agreeing not to touch them himself. He reneged on the promise the moment he heard Alfred's bedroom door close, knowing it meant the old man would probably never leave him alone with a dirty dish again.

Martha was not the only one thankful that Alfred was still with them. As he scraped the remnants of cherry pie from his plate earlier that evening, Bruce had looked across the table at the elderly butler's pallid, exhausted face and felt a familiar current of dread run through him. Alfred would soon be 94 years old. Martha had accompanied him to his last doctor's appointment and reported that he was in perfect health – for his age. But even with his meticulous diet and regimen of early morning walks and tai chi, how long could the old man be expected to last? As Bruce latched the door on the loaded dishwasher, he wondered if he had done the wrong thing. By refusing to let Alfred do his job, was he depriving the old man of the very thing that kept him going?

A less familiar, but equally strong feeling overtook him as he shut the kitchen light and made his way down to the Batcave. Martha was the only one he could talk to about this; the urge to phone her was nearly irresistible. Bruce stopped halfway down the narrow stairs and checked his watch: It was six-thirty. A call from him now would disrupt her dinner, upset Clark and piss off Lois. He'd have to wait.

He scribbled a note asking Alfred to run a series of scans on the array of computers, knowing the task would make him feel useful without taxing him too much. Then Bruce shrugged into a fighting suit and pointed the Batmobile toward the Narrows, where holiday meals often ended in drunken brawls, domestic violence and gunshots.

It was not the first time he'd gone out alone since he and Martha had decided to work together. They often patrolled different sectors of the city, meeting every few hours to adjust their tactics according the events of the night. But tonight was different, emptier, and Bruce realized that what he had told her earlier, that the holidays did not mean much to him, was no longer true.

"You ain't so tough," spat a hulking meth-fueled mugger an hour later, as Batman slammed him into an alley wall and twisted plastic cuffs around his beefy wrists.

The Dark Knight couldn't help but agree. Batman missed his girlfriend and worried over an elderly parent. He _wasn't _so tough, he thought, as he jerked up on the cuffs hard enough to make his prisoner gasp.

But he could put on a good act.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _All she wants for Christmas_

* * *


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

Impossible to adequately express my gratitude to arg914. He's the _best_. Thanks also to The Five Foot Ninja.

* * *

A fragile mid-December snow scattered across the glass-domed rooftop of the Gotham Galleria, dancing over the heads of thousands of Christmas shoppers struggling with overfilled bags, loose children and anxiety over the contents of their next credit card statements.

Bruce hadn't been in a mall since Tim was in his late teens. As he shifted a bulky Williams-Sonoma bag seconds before a boisterous girl with dyed silver hair and a chin stud careened into it, he reflected that he would not have minded preserving the streak. Apparently the number of people who shopped on the Internet had been exaggerated: Everyone in Gotham City seemed to be here today.

"This is a light day," Martha assured him when he shared this observation. "Saturday's gonna be much worse." She added that they were lucky she was working nights this week, so they could get most of their shopping done in during a single weekday morning. Bruce was not sure "lucky" was the most fitting word. As an agitated young mother trooped three rambunctious pre-school children past him, her quietest charge, a young boy, looked Bruce right in the eye and solemnly dropped his used lollipop stick into the Williams-Sonoma bag. Bruce was not sure how to respond to this; a full-out Batman scowl seemed unwarranted.

It was only fair that he accompany Martha, Bruce reminded himself as the boy's mother yanked him away. Most of the presents they were buying were for Dick's and Tim's kids. Alfred, a little out of touch with the wants of young children, had bought all six of them heavy Irish wool sweaters and savings bonds. Such practical gifts would be more gracefully received, Martha had insisted, if offered along with presents the youngsters could actually play with on Christmas morning.

They had already loaded two nail polish kits, a game of Twister, four graphic novels, a mammoth LEGO set and three Aquadoodles into the trunk of the jaguar. Martha overruled Bruce on the Game Stop gift card he had suggested for John. Dick and Kory's eldest had more than enough video games. He needed to get out of the basement, not find another reason to stay down there. Following Martha's assertion that all teen-agers loved expensive sneakers, they bought him a gift card to the Foot Locker, then headed to Williams-Sonoma for a few toys for Alfred. Bruce found himself actually liking this store: Some of the high-tech cookware looked like it could be converted into weapons.

He was pretty sure they were almost finished shopping, when Martha stopped in front of a pink and black bedecked storefront and asked, "Could you please get me a banana-peach smoothie and meet me in the food court?" At his puzzled look, she inclined her head toward the window display and said, "I'm getting something for you in here."

Bruce raised his eyes to the sign above the store: _Victoria's Secret_.

"I'm not wearing anything from there," he said.

"No," said Martha. "I am."

This took less than a second to sink in. "Peach and banana?" he asked.

"Please," she said.

It wasn't quite lunchtime yet. The food court was filling up, but there were still a few tables open. Bruce ordered Martha's smoothie, leaned against the counter of the small refreshment kiosk and started searching the rows of molded plastic booths for an empty spot.

He had just started to comb the back half of the food court when he saw her: a beautiful middle-aged woman whose sculpted cheekbones and lithe, graceful bearing made her impossible to mistake for anyone else. She sat at the plastic table as if it were a booth at _Chez Odette_, chatting affectionately with a slight dark-haired girl of about twelve.

Bruce paid for Martha's drink and a bottle of water for himself and made his way to the woman's table.

"Hello, Selina," he said.

It had been nearly fifteen years, and it took her a moment, not to recognize him, but to take in his presence in this unlikely place. Surprise and a cautious pleasure moved across Selina Kyle's face as she rose so they could exchange a kiss on the cheek.

"Katie," she said as Bruce eased onto the hard bench on the opposite side of the table. The girl looked up at him through twin curtains of glossy bangs. "This is Mr. Bruce Wayne. When I lived here, we were friends." Sort of, she seemed to add in a silent, not unfriendly glance at Bruce.

"Hi, Katie," Bruce said. She looked like Selina must have as a child, he thought.

"Kate," the girl corrected him.

"Her name is Katherine," Selina said. "I had hoped she'd end up with a different nickname, but..." Her eyes crinkled good-naturedly, while Kate's narrowed in irritation. "No one ever listens to their parents, do they?"

He wouldn't know, Bruce thought to himself, but then realized that this was untrue. He had put Alfred through more than his share of youthful rebellion.

"What brings you back to Gotham?" Bruce asked. She had left not long after she'd walked out of his life. Or had he shut her out? Probably both, he thought. He had not been able to forgive her past enough to make a relationship work. Having sensed this, Selina had become – well, anything but the demure woman now sitting before him.

"David – my husband – has some business here," Selina replied. "And I promised Katie I'd take her to visit a few of my old stomping grounds when she was old enough."

Some of her stomping grounds had been pretty rough.

It must have shown on his face. "I said some of them, Bruce," Selina said tolerantly. She eyed Martha's smoothie and added, "You're the last person I'd expect to run into in a shopping mall."

With a self-conscious half-grin that fell mostly onto the tabletop, he said, "I'm… here with my girlfriend." He wondered if it sounded as strange to hear as it did for him to say.

Selina raised a sculpted eyebrow. "She must be some woman, if she was able to drag you in here in the middle of the Christmas crush."

"She is," Bruce said. He glanced back at the smoothie stand. No Martha.

"Can I go to the Claire's?" Kate asked her mother. Selina frowned and Bruce recognized the paranoia he supposed was inherent to anyone who had spent time wearing a costume in Gotham City.

Kate thrust an impatient arm toward the store, which was just outside the food court. "It's _right there_, Mom." Selena nodded reluctantly, handed her a folded ten dollar bill and told her to be careful.

"She's a nice girl," Bruce said as they watched her disappear into the store. "She didn't roll her eyes at you."

Selina smiled. "She's a very good girl." She shook her head. "And – if you can believe it – I'm a soccer mom. That's not _all _I am," she added quickly.

He studied a face that, despite the years, in some ways seemed younger than he had ever seen it. "You're happy," he said.

Her eyes reached into his and held for a moment. She said slowly, "And so are you."

Bruce didn't blame her for sounding surprised. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"

Selina's chin lifted as she looked past his shoulder. "Is that her?"

Martha, carrying a shiny hot pink and black shopping bag, was wandering through the food court. Bruce waved her over.

"Oh, Bruce. You're robbing the cradle," Selina said as Martha spotted them, apparently recognized Selina and broke into a look of blatant fascination.

"She's thirty," Bruce protested. This would be true in several months. He stood up as Martha approached the booth, greeted him with a smile and then stretched an eager hand to Selina.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Martha."

"Nice to meet you," said Selina kindly, and Bruce remembered that most women reacted to Selina either with a sparsely masked contempt or the sort of intrigued enthusiasm Martha was displaying now. He wasn't surprised by her reaction. Martha knew enough about his relationship with Selina not to feel threatened and had once mentioned having owned a Catwoman doll as a child. He mightily hoped she did not bring up this last item and braced himself with the expectation that Martha would remind Selina that they had met before.

But as Bruce made room for her on the plastic bench, Martha merely said, "It's nice to meet you, too," and took a long sip from the smoothie.

"You've met before," Bruce heard himself saying. This earned him a curious look from Selina and an approving one from Martha, who had clearly not forgotten. He looked across the table and said to Selina. "I took you to a party at her parents' once."

Selina's eyes lit up and Bruce knew she must be strangling on a variety of catty responses. "You didn't take me to a lot of parties."

"This one was in Metropolis," Bruce said. "It was a book party for –"

"Those reporters?" Selina asked. She turned to Martha. "You must have been about three."

"Thirteen," Martha said defensively. Selina reached across the table for her hand, apologized and asked what she did for a living. Catwoman had always made it a point to stay far away from Arkham – it gave her the creeps, she had once confided to Bruce. But she did know Harvey and was glad to hear he was doing better.

A few minutes into it, the conversation started to lag and Bruce realized that among the subjects they could safely touch upon, there was not much left to say. When Katie returned a few moments later, clutching a small paper shopping bag, Selina reached for her coat.

"Can we go now?" the girl asked with typical adolescent abruptness.

Bruce got up as Selina slipped from the booth.

"Take care of yourself," he said, kissing her cheek. Selina gave Martha a sideways glance and squeezed his arm.

"Take care of your happiness," she said, smiling into his eyes. She took her daughter's hand and led her out of the food court. Bruce watched them wind through the crowd until they were eclipsed by a group of massive high school boys wearing football jackets. Then he sat back down and turned to Martha.

"Thanks for not being embarrassed about my age," she said.

"I'm not embarrassed about anything about you," he said truthfully. "But I sometimes wonder why you're not embarrassed about me."

Martha lifted herself a few inches off the bench to kiss his cheek. She had started to answer him, when her face brightened in sudden remembrance, and she asked, "Did you have sex with her in my parents' bathroom?" At the sight of Bruce's baffled face, she added, "I take it that's a 'no'?"

Truly thrown, asked, "Why would you think–?"

"After the party, I overheard my mother tell my father that she had seen the two of you walking out of the master bathroom, and she was convinced –" Martha shrugged. "My dad didn't believe it. He was sure you'd never do that and that she'd jumped to the wrong conclusion."

Bruce sat back against the hard plastic. "I can't remember…." He shut his eyes. "I was in the bathroom with her." Someone at the party had said something to Selina – or possibly just looked at her the wrong way – and she had started acting out. Bruce had dragged her into the most isolated part of the apartment he could find and told her that if she didn't behave herself, he was taking her home immediately. "We were fighting.

"I've been a jerk to your father," he admitted. "But not that much of a jerk."

Martha slanted a wicked smile at him. "I thought it made you seem kind of hot," she said.

Bruce ran a hand across his face, assumed his most impassive look and then reached surreptitiously into the Victoria's Secret shopping bag.

She smacked his hand away. "Get out of there."

"You're going to make me suffer," he complained, waving his stinging hand. It was still a week before Christmas.

"This kind of suffering is good for your soul," Martha assured him, adding, "Well, not your _soul_."

They were almost done shopping, she promised. There was a new Japanese store that had been days from opening the last time she and Lian had been to the mall. She just wanted to take a peek.

Bruce by now knew what a peek really meant, but he dutifully accompanied Martha to the shop, a small establishment hidden in the south corner of the mall between a candy store and a men's boutique. The stained glass sign just above the door was cut into the shape of a brilliant blue dragonfly.

The shop smelled faintly of steamed rice and offered a variety of imports ranging from pricy teas to dinnerware to stylized saki sets. Martha showed Bruce a pair of chopstick rests shaped like tiny dragonflies and asked the elderly proprietor why so much of his stock featured likenesses of the insect.

"The dragonfly is the national emblem of Japan," he explained. "It symbolizes happiness, and also strength, courage and victory." He added. "It is not only a Japanese symbol. In your Native American cultures, it is looked upon as the embodiment of renewal after a time of great hardship."

"Cool," Martha said, and bought three pairs of the chopstick rests, less because she really wanted them, Bruce knew, than not wanting to disappoint the shop's owner after having made a personal connection with him.

Snow had piled thick enough against the windows of the jag that Bruce could not see the windshield wipers. He unlocked the trunk and helped Martha depost the rest of their purchases, then found himself pushing her against the side of the car, kissing her.

"I love you," he murmured against her lips. "And I'm never going shopping with you again."

* * *

The weights shuddered against the U-shaped supports as Roy released the barbell and dropped his head over the back edge of the padded bench. He winced and rubbed at a sore wrist, then sat up and threw a towel around his neck.

"Not bad," Bruce said politely. He had offered Roy the use of the Batcave gym, but hadn't pressed any weight himself. He could lift about eighty pounds more than his guest and didn't want to embarrass him. Roy had seemed unsure enough about himself these days.

Roy nodded his thanks and reached for a supplement-enriched bottle of water. He had spent the last few days with Lian – in part to offset any misconceptions Midori might have fostered when she asked Linda if she regretted having babies – but also to work with his daughter on some strategies she was developing for groundfighters pitted against malevolent flyers. Most of the time, the League depended on the Supers and Gren to fight flight-capable supervillains. This put the team in a pretty bad spot when those members were knocked out of commission, or simply unavailable. Lian had come up with a few decent tactics for combating aerial antagonists. Roy, who was thrilled that she was showing an interest in the more procedural aspects of their work, had been helping her polish her ideas before she presented them to the group.

"Martha should be back from work soon," Bruce said. She had promised to give Roy a lift home. "You sure you won't have dinner with us?"

Roy shook his head. "Promised Midori I'd take her out." He stood up and stetched. "What are you getting Martha for Christmas?"

"Togetherness," Bruce said wryly. On Roy's look, he added, "We're going away for a few days right after Christmas."

"Togetherness," Roy repeated dubiously.

Bruce deadpanned, "All she wants for Christmas is me."

"You're a billionaire," Roy informed him. "You'd better buy her something."

"I actually did," Bruce said. He had found Martha a rare centuries-old first edition medical textbook on the early treatment of mental illness. The remedies described were horrific to the point of hilarity. Bruce was sure she would love it.

Roy seemed less certain. "Buy her some jewelry," he advised. "Women think you're not serious about them if you don't give them romantic gifts on holidays."

Skeptically, Bruce asked, "You're buying Midori jewelry?" He had the feeling any diamond Roy might give her would end up as the power source on a laser cannon.

"Well, she's different," Roy admitted. He added awkwardly, "I'm looking for a relationship-saving gift."

"You're running out of time for one of those," Bruce said, not without sympathy. Christmas was only a few days away.

"I know," Roy said, not talking about the calendar.

They were quiet for a moment. Bruce walked over to the barbell and began twirling off one of the clamps that held weight plates against the metal pole.

"What would you do if you were me?" Roy asked.

"Alfred would kill me if I brought a dog into this house," Bruce said. He examined Roy's pained face and added, "No way for you two to reach a compromise?"

"I don't see how," Roy said. He started snapping on a pair of tear-away basketball pants over his gym shorts, pausing when he heard a creak coming from the main part of the cave.

"That's Martha," Bruce said. He wished he knew what else to say to Roy.

"Thanks for letting me hang out," Roy said. "Have a great Christmas." As Martha poked her head in the gymnasium door, he mouthed, "Jewelry."

* * *

Bruce figured she would be an hour, between the trip to and from Deer Valley and the time she would spend chatting with Midori. He went up to his office, opened a locked drawer on the side of his desk and pulled out the book he had bought for Martha.

He kicked off his shoes, swung his feet onto the desk and paged through the battered, slightly musty volume, grimacing at a description of a treatment that involved trephination and leeches. He imagined Martha unwrapping the book, then pictured her opening a box containing an expensive bracelet. The book won this hypothetical contest, hands down. Bruce placed it carefully back into the drawer.

At the moment, the best present he could ask for would be to hear that things had been happily been resolved between Roy and Midori. He knew their relationship was not a barometer for his and Martha's, but their discord made him uneasy. He felt for Roy, who, like Bruce, had never had a lot of luck with women. In Midori, he had finally seemed to find a true partner in life. Bruce wasn't sure how things could have fallen apart so fast.

A light tap on the door startled him. He could usually hear Alfred shuffling along the hallway.

"It's me," Martha announced, as Bruce pulled his feet from the desk. "So put away whatever it is that you're hiding in there."

"I'm not hiding anything," he said, as he let her in. "You're back fast."

She frowned. "I've been gone an hour."

Bruce lifted a thick golden hair from her sweater. "Midori's losing her touch."

"Well, I was rolling around on the floor with him," said Martha. "A single hair isn't too bad."

Before Bruce could joke that it better have been the dog she was rolling around with, Martha added, "They seemed happy to see each other."

He nodded. "Good. Let's get some dinner." It would soon be time to hit the streets.

* * *

Kory had taken charge of the decorating this year; the Grayson's suburban Bludhaven home was bedecked in so much light that Alfred had to squint against the green and red glow as Martha helped him out of the car. Knuckling his own eyes, Bruce popped the trunk and loaded himself up with presents. It was cold. He didn't feel like making another trip outside.

Tamand'r opened the door and, apparently believing a blank stare was enough of a greeting for Bruce and Martha, went directly to Alfred and took him by the arm. The elderly butler was the only grandfather he had ever known and the usually churlish youth was always gentle and solicitous with him.

"Where's his suitcase?" Tamand'r asked. Alfred was staying with the Graysons while Bruce and Martha were away.

"Trunk," Bruce said.

"It's too heavy for you," the teen-ager announced, as Martha moved around the car to get it. She shot Bruce a mischievous glance and shrugged.

"OK," she said. She took a few presents from the large stack in Bruce's arms.

Tim's hybrid SUV had been parked in the driveway when they pulled in; he and Kia and the kids were sleeping over so they could spend Christmas with Dick's family. Bruce noticed a slight tension around Martha's mouth as Tim walked over to greet her and realized that she had known all along that Tim didn't trust her.

Or at least, he hadn't. Whatever he had learned about Martha must have satisfied him. Tim placed a comfortable kiss on her cheek, took the packages from her and led the way into the living room, where the children – some of them airborne – were playing around a ceiling-high fir tree.

"No fake trees after last year," Dick joked, as put an arm around Bruce's shoulder. The previous Christmas, Alfred had almost been killed by small torpedoes the Joker had planted in Wayne Manor's artificial tree.

"Thanks for doing this, Dick," Martha said. When he learned she would be spending the holiday with her family, Dick had invited Martha over for Christmas Eve dinner. Bruce could hire a car to take her to Metropolis the following morning.

"Our pleasure," he said, offering her a charming smile. "Hold this for me, will you?"

He stuck Ryand'r in her arms and walked into the kitchen. Tamand'r, who had helped Alfred into an armchair that permitted him a view of the entire living room, nearly dove across the room to seize his youngest sister from their imperiled guest.

"I can hold a baby," Martha protested.

"Not this one," Tamand'r said, scowling at the kitchen door. His mother had apparently had the same thought. She hurried out of the kitchen, saw with relief that her son had scooped up Ryand'r, then greeted the newcomers with a series of bone-crushing hugs.

Christmas Eve dinner at the Graysons' was a sumptuous affair, with the quantity of food outnumbering the capacity of the overstuffed diners. Alfred, worn out from the ride, stopped trying to serve everyone else after only two protests.

Kia watched enviously as Kory and Martha reached for second helpings of peanut butter and chocolate pie.

"You two are so skinny," she moaned. Tim grinned and gave his wife's pleasantly curvaceous thigh an approving pat.

"I work it off," Kory said, grabbing behind her chair without taking her eyes off of her dessert. She settled a restless Ryand'r onto her shoulders.

"I have a high metabolism," Martha added.

"I'm glad you didn't say you worked it off," Bruce commented mildly to Martha.

"I work out with you," she protested.

"Every Sunday," Bruce allowed, as if he were saying "Once a year." He raised a chin toward Dick, who was holding the coffee pot out to Martha so that she could not possibly grab it without contacting the hot end. "Turn that around."

"Oh." Dick glanced at the hot glass carafe. "Sorry."

Shortly after dinner, Alfred bid the others goodnight and allowed Tamand'r to help him to the first-floor guest bedroom. Kory put on some Christmas music and began to dance around the living room with Ryand'r.

"Don't get her excited," Dick said apprehensively. He and Bruce – who had slept less than usual and was now equal parts tired and antsy – were sitting in matching recliners; Tim lay on the newly repaired couch, using his wife's lap as a pillow; their daughter was asleep on his chest. The older Grayson girls had been excitedly shaking the packages under the tree. They scrambled to join their mother and younger sister in dance and were soon bouncing around the room. Tim's five-year-old son Dustin wandered into the midst of this expression of Tamaranian joy and looked close to tears at his inability to participate in his cousins' impromptu ceiling-tagging contest. Martha impulsively snatched the boy up into her arms and started dancing with him next to Kory and Ryand'r.

This seemed to satisfy him. Bruce snuck a look at Tim and was disappointed to see that his eyes were closed. Kia, however, was beaming at Martha gratefully.

By nine, the children had been put to bed and Tamand'r was ensconced in his basement refuge. Martha and Kory were dancing with abandon to Mariah Carey's _All I Want for Christmas is You. _Halfway through the song, Dick leapt up and started boogieing with both women; Tim inclined his head toward Bruce and rolled his eyes.

Bruce checked his watch. Quiver had promised to keep an eye on Gotham. He wondered how things were going. He had never missed a Christmas Eve patrol before.

A few minutes later, Martha dropped onto his lap. "Are you having a good time?" she asked.

"For me, I am," Bruce replied honestly.

She laughed and gave him a quick kiss. "Would you feel better if we went back for a few hours?" Her lips grazed his ear. "I could give you a ride on the Superwoman Express."

He sat up, eager to accept this offer, when he saw that Dick, now standing with Tim near the entrance to the living room, was waving him over. Bruce slid Martha from his lap onto the cushiony chair and followed the younger men into the foyer.

"You guys feel like taking a little ride out to Bludhaven?" Dick asked in a low voice.

Tim glanced into the living room, assessed his wife's mood with a squint and said, "Sure."

Bruce hesitated. "I was thinking of heading back to Gotham for a couple of hours."

His protégés erupted in protest. "Come on," Dick said. "How often do we get together like this?"

"Come on, Bruce," Tim echoed. He did a double-take at the junction between the foyer and the living room, where Martha was suddenly standing.

"Can I talk to you?" she asked Bruce. He followed her to an isolated spot just inside the living room, aware that Tim had just shot Dick a disgruntled look.

"Go with them," she said, as soon as they were alone.

It was tempting. "But –"

"When will you get another chance like this?" Martha asked. She reached for Bruce's hand and let it fall against the tiny projector hidden on her hip under a long sweater. "I'm sure Superwoman is planning to take a spin past Gotham tonight."

He was too used to denying himself to give up that easily. "You wanted to get home –"

She stood on her toes to touch a pair of fingers to his lips. "No one in my family gets home on time. And I've got to stop back at the apartment to pick up their presents anyway."

But first she was giving him this gift. With Martha they seemed to keep on coming.

He returned to the foyer where Dick and Tim stood waiting, their faces shadowed with resignation.

"I'm going with you," he said.

Dick brightened. "Cool."

Tim looked from Bruce to Martha, who was now lifting a reindeer-shaped butter cookie from a platter on the living room coffee table. "OK," he said grudgingly. "I like her."

* * *

Wally had never said a word to Roy about the disastrous Thanksgiving dinner in Deer Valley. He simply phoned Roy on Christmas Eve and asked what time their plane was getting in. Linda would probably pick them up; the Flash was playing Santa at a string of pediatric hospitals and an orphanage.

When Roy assured him that Midori was now versed on which topics were appropriate for the dinner table and which were not, Wally replied, "We don't care what she talks about. We just want you to have a good time."

And they had: He and Midori had missed each other while Roy was in Gotham. They had spent a pleasant few days together since he had come home; the only touchy moment had occurred that morning, when Roy had stepped in to help Midori fasten the diamond necklace he'd bought her and she started to cry.

Her tears had told Roy everything he needed to know. The last few days had been an illusion. He watched Midori smile tentatively at Linda as they carried a handful of dirty dishes into the kitchen and wondered how long it take for her to leave him.

* * *

Lois ran a faded scouring pad in a lazy circle around the hollow of a large saucepan. Her eyes flicked toward the heap of dishes in the kitchen sink and she wondered how likely it would be that Clark would come home soon and finish them for her. It would take him a second – and he never minded – but he had left the table halfway through Christmas dinner to respond to some unspecified calamity.

Or a fictitious one, she thought. Her husband had disappeared just as Martha – in response to a question by Gren that was almost pathetic in its feigned casualness – said she would be spending New Year's Eve on Tanquere Island.

Martha could not have afforded a few days in Tanquere Island if she'd had a booming private practice for several years. It was a millionaire's resort – something she seemed not to know until, with a whistle, Clay enlightened her. Martha could fly there, of course, but she would have had to sleep on the beach, at least until she was rousted by a member of the island's massive security force. It was obvious who was taking her there.

Lois tossed the foamy pad onto the tower of dishes and walked back out to the dining room. Gren and Martha had taken Clay with them to Montreal, where they were picking up Emma and a Christmas dinner for Meera, who was on monitor duty on the Watchtower. That left Lois to spend another Christmas night alone, this time not merely missing her husband and children, but worrying about the direction her daughter's life had taken.

It seemed to her that to participate much longer in the silence Clark had wordlessly imposed on the subject of Bruce Wayne might be to lose Martha. Lois believed herself less naïve than Clark when it came to sex; a fling with an inarguably attractive, yet dangerous man was rarely life-defining. Martha's affair with the French professor had never bothered Lois: she had been confident that her daughter knew what she was doing. What made this thing with Bruce different from what Lois could see – and admittedly, the view was poor from where she stood – was that whatever hold he had on Martha had gone considerably beyond the physical. His influence seemed to be affecting her very identity.

It wasn't just the superhero moniker – though Lois thought it patronizing to assume Martha couldn't live up to her name. She couldn't imagine the mindset that would inspire her career-driven, workaholic daughter to jeopardize her professional future by applying to only one prospective employer in a field where fifty applications sometimes yielded not a single offer. And she and Martha had always been able to talk, Lois thought longingly. Now so many subjects seemed off-limits.

Yet, she could sense that Martha was as happy as she'd ever been – happier, possibly, than she had been in the days before a frantic bullet shattered her plans to marry a sweet-natured Metropolis police officer. Incredibly, Bruce Wayne was responsible for this bliss. The brooding middle-aged misanthrope who had rebuffed Clark so many times appeared to be bringing his daughter great joy. Lois had once suspected Bruce of seducing her daughter simply to make a fool out of Clark, but a part of her always known that Martha was too smart to allow such a thing. This relationship was deeper than she could have ever foreseen, Lois thought as she traced a formless pattern in the frost that had collected on her glass patio door.

She jerked back with a start when she found herself staring into the shimmering reflection of a stylized red and yellow _S_. Her husband slid open the door and stepped into the living room, now dressed in the blue button-down shirt he had been wearing before he'd taken off.

"Startle you?" Clark asked apologetically.

"I was just thinking," Lois said. He must have sensed the distress in her voice; he reached instantly for her hand.

"Where are the kids?" he asked.

She told him and then followed as he headed into the kitchen for the remains of a Jewish apple cake Clay and Gren had set upon with frightening gusto. Clark knew Lois would save him a piece. She always did.

Regretting her abruptness, but fearing Clark might vanish again if she warmed up to the subject, Lois said, "She's going away with him."

The cake-filled plate clattered onto the kitchen island, but Clark didn't answer.

"How long are you going to ignore this?" she asked.

After a brittle moment, Clark said wretchedly, "Until it's over." He picked up his plate and walked back into the dining room.

Lois hurried after him, hoping that when the kitchen door swung back, she wouldn't be facing an empty room. He was still there, sitting at the table now, staring bleakly at the piece of cake.

"What if it _isn't_ over?" she asked. "This has been going on for a while."

Clark shielded his eyes with a large hand. "I can't talk about it." He lifted his face to look around the barren table for a fork.

"I'll get one," Lois said, and headed to the kitchen.

Parallax had nearly taken her daughter away forever; less than a year later, she wasn't going to lose Martha to silence, Lois thought as she reached into the flatware drawer. If Clark could not discuss it, she would have to. She would talk to Martha and, if need be, she would talk to Bruce, if only to verbally kick his dour ass. Lois Lane didn't believe in New Year's resolutions, but she had just made one.

* * *

Despite an agreement that the adults would refrain from exchanging presents – Dick, Tim and Kia hated to shop as much as Bruce did and Kory liked it too much – Mary and Valiand'r dumped a couple of packages on Bruce's lap as he started to get up from the dinner table. Dustin followed, soberly handing over a gift bag and scolding him for not being awake when the rest of the gifts had been exchanged.

"When you have kids," Kory told him serenely, as if imparting a lesson Bruce might soon put to use, "You can say goodbye to sleeping in on Christmas morning."

"That makes it sound so enticing," Dick said. His eyes were dark and hollow from lack of sleep; so were Tim's. By the time the three of them had returned from Bludhaven, it was close to dawn. As Bruce plodded up the stairs and the younger men made themselves breakfast, Kory had complained that they had barely beaten Santa back.

He knew Martha would be disappointed that he hadn't stayed awake to watch the children open the presents she'd helped him buy, but the excursion into Bludhaven had been busy and brutal and Bruce wanted to be in decent shape for the drive back to Gotham. He had promised to meet Martha at Wayne Manor before midnight so that they could exchange gifts before Christmas was officially over.

Bruce could not imagine receiving a more precious gift than the unexpected one she'd handed him on Christmas Eve by encouraging him to accompany Dick and Tim on their own peculiar version of a boys' night out. He had forgotten how invigorating it felt to fight alongside Dick, with his ageless exuberance and Tim, still as dogged and meticulous as he had been as a youth. Bludhaven's lawbreaking element, out in force for the holiday, was dismayed to see that Nightwing had brought Batman and Robin with him on some sort of nostalgia tour. None of them were getting any younger, Dick had quipped, as he'd taken out a duo of safecrackers with a jumping double front kick. But this new generation of hoods had seemed to hone their fighting skills with the use of an old-style Nintendo Wii. They didn't make for much of a challenge.

Bruce readied himself for the trip home as soon as Kory and Tim started clearing away the dessert plates. He stepped into the basement, left a couple of hundreds under Tamand'r's video controller as unspoken thanks for the teen's attention to Alfred, then headed back upstairs to get his things. Dick shanghaied him as he rounded the foyer, put an arm around his shoulders and led him onto the front porch.

"It's cold out here," Bruce informed him.

Dick nodded. "Just got off the phone with Roy."

Tensing, Bruce asked, "Everything all right?"

"He didn't sound happy," Dick admitted. "This whole baby thing is a mess."

"I hope they can work it out," Bruce said quietly.

"Yeah," Dick said. He cocked his head at Bruce. "If you and Martha have a baby, would it be able to fly around with my kids?"

He had been expecting a query about the direction of his love life and had half-suspected that Dick's odd behavior in leaving the irrepressible Ryand'r with Martha and later offering her the scalding end of the coffeepot was a test of some sort. Somehow, he didn't anticipate a question that combined both possibilities. Bruce attempted to look at Dick as if he were insane. He didn't pull it off very well.

Dick grinned. "Kory's suspected since Parallax. How does Martha get thrown from an airborne explosion if she's not in the air? And then you get with her and all of a sudden Batman's got himself a new partner and she's blonde and gorgeous and Martha doesn't care." He paused. "How _does_ she get all tall and blonde?"

Bruce said carefully, "Superwoman – her identity and any other secrets she might have – they'd be her secrets. Not mine."

Dick's features filled immediately with remorse. He said soberly, "Jesus, Bruce. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"You can't stop being a detective," Bruce said. "I know another guy like that."

Dick promised, "This conversation never happened."

"Except for the part where I tell you it's cold out here," Bruce said. "That may bear repeating."

* * *

Midori's gift to Lian – a pair of rocket boots – was undisputedly the most exciting present under the Wests' tree. It was nearly midnight before Roy brought his daughter back from the emergency room. Wally, who had done the driving, and Parker, who would not let them go to the hospital without him, went right to bed. After assuring the stricken Midori that three stitches close to her hairline would not mar her exotic beauty, Lian headed into the bathroom for a careful shower. Midori turned desolately to Roy, who gave her a tired smile and assured her that the boots remained among the coolest gifts Lian would ever receive.

"She's planning to spend the whole day tomorrow getting used to them," he said. At her doubtful expression, he added, "It's snowing outside."

The size of Midori's eyes doubled and took on a pleading look. Roy grinned. She had experienced snow dozens of times, but the wet white stuff had never failed to shatter her scientific detachment. She had lived on Earth for a little over two years, which was her approximate age, emotionally, when it came to her interactions with snow.

He was still disentangling her parka from the coat rack as Midori dashed outside. Roy found her in the middle of the front yard, arms wrapped around her shivering body, eager face upturned to the gray clouds.

"You're like a kid," he informed her, as he held open the coat and she stuffed her arms clumsily into the sleeves.

Given the circumstances, "kid" was probably the wrong word to use, but Midori didn't seem to notice.

"It's so – geometrically spectacular," she said.

"Pretty, too," Roy teased. He took her hand and they started to walk. As they approached the corner, Midori pointed to a triangular shaft of light projecting from a lamppost. Broad wafers of snow swirled in an illuminated pirouette toward the sidewalk and when Midori turned to Roy, he thought at first that some of the flakes had fallen onto her cheeks.

But they were tears.

"I'm trying to force you into something you don't want," she whispered.

Thickly, he said. "I'm trying to keep you from something you want."

He thought it might be a beginning, a move toward a dialogue that could lead them to compromise. But hours after they had started kissing under the streetlight, Roy realized she might also have been saying goodbye.

* * *

Wayne Manor without Alfred felt empty and a little colder. Bruce was glad to see Martha push through the fireplace and close it carefully behind the passageway that led to the Batcave.

"It's still Christmas," she said happily as her eyes moved from the grandfather clock to Bruce's face. "Something's bothering you," she added. "Kiss me first and then tell me what it is."

She didn't seem surprised when he recounted the conversation with Dick.

"When we were dancing with Kory, he swung me hard enough to send a normal girl flying out the window," Martha said. "I don't mind them knowing. I just hope my father doesn't find out. He wasn't happy last year when he found out I told Alfred."

Bruce was no less eager to run afoul of Clark. "He's right. As long as your identities are linked, any disclosure should be mutually agreed upon."

She folded her arms across her chest and waited patiently.

"Protectra," he said.

Martha smiled. "When did you first realize you were attracted to me?"

"Your present's in my office," Bruce said. "I'll get it."

"I thought we were going to give each other togetherness," Martha said, as he returned a few minutes later with a hastily wrapped package.

"This'll help get you through when spending a week alone with me starts driving you crazy," Bruce assured her.

"I hid yours under Alfred's bed," Martha said as he sat on the edge of the couch. She scooted closer to him and started tearing at the paper.

He could not have chosen a better gift; this became obvious the moment Martha's eyes found the title of the book. She hurled herself at Bruce with a vigor that sent them both tumbling onto floor.

"Baby, you know me so well," she said as she peppered his mouth with grateful kisses.

Bruce wondered if he could return the diamond bracelet he'd bought as a back-up gift. He would not be taking any more advice from Roy.

"We have to go upstairs for yours," she told him. He thought instantly of the _Victoria's Secret_ shopping bag, and with her uncanny ability to read him, Martha added impishly, "Don't look at me like that. I wouldn't hide anything sexy under Alfred's bed."

Alfred's loss, thought Bruce, as he followed her instructions to meet her in his bedroom. He could hear the door creak before he was halfway up the stairs. By the time he stepped into the room, she was sitting on his bed and had switched on the immense flat-screen television. Alfred had installed the TV to help Bruce through several miserable months of bed rest following Batman's near-murder by Sean Fray. It felt odd to see it working; the high-tech monitor had seemed out of place in his Victorian-style bedroom and he almost never used it.

Martha turned to him, breathless with nervousness and excitement, and said, "OK. I have to give you a little speech first."

"A speech?" Bruce repeated.

"A short speech." She sat on the bed and held out her hand. Bruce took it and perched next to her.

"Everyone has you wrong," Martha said, and Bruce was intrigued by the tremor in her voice as she pointed the remote control toward the television. Instantly, a stone gargoyle filled the enormous screen. It was one of the granite creatures presiding over the Masonic Temple that stood on the edge of the Narrows. The temple rooftop was a special place for Batman – a refuge during the thirty years he'd patrolled Gotham, a place where he could think – or simply clear his head. Sometimes, it had been the only spot in an unforgiving city where he could find peace.

"People say you do what you do out of some kind of vengeance," Martha continued. "I know there have been times when you've thought that yourself. But –" She shook her head and moved the remote again. Bruce watched the camera pull back to reveal the full rooftop, then retreat even farther, exposing an orange sun rising up through the Gotham City skyline.

"You don't spend a lifetime protecting a city out of vengeance," she said, staring hard at the screen as a tear curved around her cheek. Her hand tightened around his. "You do it – there's only one reason. You do it out of love."

Tears were running freely down Martha's face now. "You're full of love. Better not… tell the criminals," she joked shakily as she looked up at him.

"This is your city," she said. And she touched the remote a final time.

Children running through a city park in blissful play… a Thanksgiving parade down Broad Street… a flurry of stills featuring the work of Gotham's finest local artists… businessmen and women lunching by a fountain at midday… high school students painting a mural – of Batman – on the side of a graffiti-desecrated brick recreation center… an outdoor concert in Fox Square, horn section shimmering in the approaching evening...

It was a Gotham he rarely saw – yet had spent his life protecting. As the images of his city dissolved one into other, music – blues and jazz mostly, with a little bit of pop – welled from the television's stereo speakers. Local musicians, Martha explained hoarsely. She had visited local clubs… recorded the best of them….

Bruce was too overwhelmed to do anything but gaze at the screen, transfixed by the unfamiliar beauty that was Gotham. He gripped Martha's hand as if it were a lifeline.

When the images faded along with the music and the screen became blue again, Bruce could do nothing but sit and stare at the blank monitor. He felt Martha's eyes moving hopefully along his face, but he could only continue to clench her hand.

She offered, with a rare shyness, that she had converted the soundtrack onto an audio chip so he could play it in his car. Most of the images had been made into stills. She had put them into a scrapbook for him.

His free hand moved to touch his own face, then dropped back against the bed. Shaking his head, Bruce whispered, "I don't deserve you."

Martha took his face in her hands. "You deserve more."

Her mouth was too close for him not to kiss her, for him not to run his fingertips along her cheeks and through her hair. He was getting lost again, this time in the touch and tastes of a woman who knew him better than any other, who at this late point in his life was bringing him a salvation he could barely comprehend.

But then Martha dropped her head against the bedspread with a groan that had nothing to do with passion.

"That's not the phone I think it is?" she asked unhappily.

Bruce palmed open a panel in the side of his night table and picked up a hidden receiver.

Batman spoke into it. "Yes."

He leaned close to Martha and shifted the phone slightly so they could both hear Lakeeta Reardon's somber voice.

It was bad, Reardon told him. A department store Santa who had been fired days earlier for stuffing thick red pockets with merchandise had gotten drunk and hurled a bottle of rum into the store's plate glass window. Regrettably, the flask hadn't been empty and he'd attached a lit fuse to it. There wouldn't be much of a post-Christmas sale at that establishment – or any of the others along the city's half-mile wide shopping district.

The explosion and subsequent fire had routed sour celebrants from a nearby bar; they had taken the gaping hole in the enormous window as an invitation to help themselves, the commissioner continued. Others had joined them. A full-blown loot-fest was now in effect.

"How many looters?" Batman asked.

"Hundreds," Reardon said bitterly. "Christmas seems to bring out the best in so many of us."

* * *

It had gone far beyond a looting spree: The department store fire had spread to the electronics warehouse next to it; tongues of yellow-orange flame teased at a third building, a discount bookstore. Firefighters scrambled to contain the blaze; Superwoman spiraled into their midst seconds before a sniper's bullet tore through the coat of a female rookie. Still clenching the crushed projectile, Superwoman dove after the shooter, body-slamming him with unintentionally excessive force as she swerved to avoid a man running through the streets with a television. She tossed the unconscious assassin into a police car, shoved the bullet into a nearby cop's hand and raced to help the firefighters. She couldn't worry about people stealing TVs, she thought, as she lifted over the crowd, searching briefly for a glimpse of the Batmobile before heading into the building, at the fire captain's request, to find a night watchman. Superwoman allowed herself a tiny smile when she saw the armored black car roaring down Broad Street. By the time she had dragged the hacking security guard – and the girlfriend he had snuck into the building with him – out from under a second-story cubicle, Batman was wading through a river of rioters and Quiver was there, putting a wristlock on the guy with the television.

Reardon later told reporters that the five hours it took to completely quell the looters, stabilize the fire-gutted buildings and capture the gang members who decided to carry their turf war into the middle of the chaos was commendable in comparison to similar incidents in Los Angeles and Chicago that had raged on for days. But as she cruised into the Batcave shortly after dawn, Martha couldn't help feeling considerably less satisfied. She smelled like she had smoked a thousand cigarettes. Two cops had been hurt before she and Batman had arrived on the scene. It would take nearly a year to rebuild the commerce district. And… she didn't want to seem selfish, but –

"We missed our plane," Bruce said as soon as he got out of the car. He pulled off his mask.

"Yeah," Martha said in a small voice. They looked at each other somberly for a moment before she added, "You know, we really don't _need_ a plane…."

Bruce shook his head. And he was right, Martha thought sadly. Gotham probably couldn't do without them for a week. She guessed he was relieved, that he hadn't felt right about going, because he didn't seem at all disappointed.

"_I'm_ taking _you_ on this trip," Bruce said. "So get your things."

As the grin burst across her face, the phone rang. Bruce squinted suspiciously at the caller identification display and announced, "It's Dick."

He had barely lifted the phone to his mouth before Martha heard Dick's voice on the other end of the phone saying irritably, "OK, Alfred. Calm down."

Martha watched anxiously as Bruce pressed the phone against his ear, listened for a few moments, then expressed his thanks and hung up.

"Alfred's first stop this morning was to Dick's control room," he told Martha. "When he heard about the riot, he knew right away that we'd missed the plane he'd chartered for us. And he wasn't having that.

"We're taking a private jet to Tanquere Island. It leaves in an hour," Bruce said. "Now let's get out of here before someone commits a crime."

* * *

If you had the means to pay the price, Tanquere Island was worth every dollar: Each of the dozens of villas faced an ocean trimmed with soft, white sand. There were colorful coral-bejeweled reefs, botanical gardens, exquisitely manicured mountain trails and, on the west side of the island, even a small tropical rain forest. Scantily clad, attractive attendants of either gender stood poised along the beach, ready to guide guests toward 'complimentary' scuba stations, hang-glider bays and mini-bike depots. Most visitors asked to be delivered to the bar.

Martha could barely sit still as the cab took a leisurely lap around the resort. She had not been on a real vacation since her graduation from medical school and by the time the car stopped in front of their villa, she was rattling off a tentative list of things she wanted to do as soon as they stowed their bags. Bruce let her talk. He had seen Martha this keyed up before: She had not slept for days and was about to crash. As he tipped the bellman, she meandered through the six-room villa. By the time Bruce followed her up the stairs, she was asleep, fully clothed, in the master bedroom.

She did not stir when he undressed her and eased her beneath the covers. The sheets were deliciously cool and Bruce thought he would slip under them for a moment himself, before he took a look around. He watched the room disappear behind eyes that seemed to close of their own accord; he did not open them until early the next afternoon.

Martha wriggled awake an hour later, after Bruce held a stack of strawberry pancakes under her nose. By dusk, though still sluggish, they'd managed to get themselves dressed.

"I can't believe how worn out we were," Martha said as they walked along the beach. "I guess that's what happens when you never take a break."

They were invigorated enough the next day to manage a few restless hours lying on the beach before seeking a more active vacation: biking, scuba-diving and hiking through the island's less traveled trails. They spent one of the last days of December picnicking in a forest near a small waterfall. Martha suggested returning there to greet the New Year.

Bruce had not been looking forward to spending an evening with a room full of drunken revelers, but he knew Martha was more social than he was and that she tended to defer to his instincts to isolate himself. He wanted her to have a good time.

"You don't want to go dancing or anything?" Bruce asked.

She shook her head. "I want as much 'peaceful' as I can get before we head home."

They grabbed a lantern, a few blankets, some food and a bottle of fake champagne – Bruce hadn't had a real drink since downing the bottle of brandy that almost killed him – and headed up the mountain just before dark. In the minutes before midnight, as they waited in each other's arms for the alarm to chime on Bruce's Breguet watch, they heard the thick flutter of wings above them and looked up in time to see the departing figure of a giant fruit bat.

"Ours are cuter," Martha said, as if the bats in his cave were pets.

Bruce checked his watch. One minute.

"The first half of this year was one of the worst I've ever had," he said as they watched the bat loop back around and hover languidly over the waterfall. "Thinking I'd lost you…."

Martha lifted herself onto an elbow and reached up to touch his face. "The second half –" Bruce took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. "These last six months – they've been the best of my life."

Her eyes radiated with a joy brighter than their lantern. "Mine, too,"

They closed the year between their lips, laughing softly as the tinny alarm protested their haste. They did not need a watch, or fireworks, or noisemakers to tell them something new had started.

_

* * *

_

The sun had closed its own path and now his turn was coming. He would swing around, a bright star, burning away the old, the old guard, the old guardians… blazing into a new year,

his _year… their last year._

**

* * *

Next Chapter: **_Disruptions_

* * *


	13. Chapter 13

Beta read with care by arg914. Thanks!

* * *

**This chapter is offered as a modest tribute to the memory of Heath Ledger.**

* * *

The wind spattered thick beads of frigid rain against Roy's bare feet as he stood in the frame of his front door, staring vacantly into the gray afternoon. He absently folded his arms over the goosebumps rising on the freckled skin below the sleeves of his t-shirt. Rain clattered against the concrete path to his porch with such force that he could hardly hear the wind howling with the plaintiveness of a coyote lost in the desert. His feet were so numb from the cold that he barely felt the warm, wet object fall against his right instep.

He looked down to see RJ gazing up at him, his eyes full of slavish love. The dog, sensing Roy's mood, had brought him a gift and was now waiting patiently to see if it would be accepted.

Roy gingerly picked up the slimy roll of packing tape.

"Give this to Mommy," he said softly, handing it back to the dog. RJ turned eagerly toward the bedroom, but halted halfway across the room as Midori emerged from the back of the house carrying a sealed cardboard box. She stopped when she saw Roy standing by the door. Her red-rimmed, puffy eyes were a match for his.

A diesel engine roared outside the front door, followed by a grating whine of brakes. Midori set the box on a pile of others and started to move past Roy through the front door.

He grasped her hand and pulled her against him, his mouth colliding with a fluffy blonde curl just above her ear.

"Don't go," he whispered.

Midori's face crumpled and she pressed her shuddering body against his chest. Roy could feel warm tears bleeding through his thin t-shirt and the softness of her hair where her head was tucked under his chin. He drew his hands up against the back of her head and pressed a kiss into her bangs.

A heavy door slammed outside and Midori pulled away. She didn't look at him as she walked out into the rain and before he heard the metallic ramp of the moving van clang against the wet asphalt driveway Roy knew that he was already alone.

* * *

"I'm sorry; I'm going to have to cancel for tonight."

Martha frowned into the phone. "Mom, why are you shouting?"

In a normal voice, her mother said, "Sorry," and now Martha could hear other voices yelling and at least one car honking in the background. "Is it on the news yet?"

"Is what on the news?" Martha asked, sandwiching her cell phone between her ear and shoulder and swiveling toward her computer. She tapped out the Daily Planet's URL on her keyboard.

"Power's out downtown and all along the bay," Lois told her, adding with sudden fury, "You son-of-a-bitch!"

As Martha worked out that this last remark was not aimed at her, her mother said, "Sorry, Martha. The damn cabs in this town. I've got to get back to the Planet."

"You want me to come up there?" Martha asked, noting that the paper's web site was down.

"I think we're good. Superman's on it," Lois replied. "It looks like a substation blew. The city does such a half-assed job maintaining the power grid. We've been writing about it for years." She cursed again, presumably at another bypassing cab. "I've got to go, sweetie. We'll reschedule. Soon."

Martha echoed her mother's "I love you," and hung up. As she refreshed the screen without any luck, she felt a joint stab of relief and guilt at Lois's need to cancel their dinner. Her mother had called the day after Martha had returned with Bruce from Tanquere Island, asked if she'd had a good time and invited her daughter to meet her for what Martha recognized was a summit as much as a request to share a meal.

As apprehensive as it made her, Martha longed for the chance to speak freely with at least one of her parents about her relationship with Bruce, even if it meant having to duel with the verbal barracuda that was her mother. Lois would unfurl with very little restraint her opinion of Bruce Wayne and her feelings about her daughter being involved with him and it would not be pretty.

But then she would listen. Lois was a great reporter and a good mother because she never allowed her personal views to override the truth of a matter. If she could be convinced that Bruce was good for her daughter, she could become what Martha had described to Bruce as their "secret weapon" when it came to winning over Clark.

"Nothing about your mother is secret," Bruce had commented, adding, "It's going to take the both of us to convince her."

Martha agreed. Her mother was going to want to grill Bruce over his intentions; she wouldn't just accept the assurances of her smitten daughter. But Lois clearly did not have a three-way meeting in mind: She had suggested a mother-daughter meal "somewhere away" from Metropolis and Gotham City and was vague about where they should actually dine.

"Just pick me up and we'll decide from there," Lois had said. That meant Martha could not deposit Bruce at a pre-arranged location before retrieving her mother. She had already started feeling sorry for the patrons and staff of whatever restaurant Lois chose. Although she let it loose less often, Martha's temper was almost as fiery as her mother's and she felt very protective of Bruce. If Lois said the wrong thing, the ensuing fireworks could make any recent New Year's display seem like a single blast from a cap gun.

Now the confrontation would be delayed and the whole thing would be hanging over their heads again, Martha thought, as she flipped her cell phone back open and pushed Bruce's number on her speed dial. Disappointment was now replacing her initial sense of relief.

"I'll invite your father to dinner again," Bruce said when she told him. She knew he still felt uneasy about what he considered going behind Clark's back. Bruce insisted his desire to approach Clark first was his way of showing respect for the many years the two men had fought together. Martha suspected there was also some kind of feudal guy thing in play.

"He's going to say no," she said.

"I know," Bruce said. "How'd it go with Harvey?"

"I'm heading over there now," Martha said.

"Let me know how that goes," he said. She promised she would.

* * *

As ambivalent as she felt about putting off the inevitable talk with her mother, the delay did afford Martha the chance to more wholly enjoy what she hoped would be a pleasant surprise for Harvey. Adrienne had not heard back yet from the board of governors about her petition to stay on at the asylum as a part-time consultant, but he had acquiesced to her appeal to make Harvey's life there a little less stifling. He hadn't done this readily: the director had denied her request with an almost panicked expression the first time she approached him, but Martha had suited up in her Lois Lane genes for this particular battle and she did not intend to lose. When she stepped into his office, ready to argue, for the third time in two weeks, Adrienne had blurted, "Fine. You take full responsibility if this goes south."

Martha had agreed, though in reality Adrienne would remain liable for having authorized the switch. She wasn't worried. Harvey had been ready for this for a long time.

"What unauthorized appliance have you brought in now?" Harvey asked as she opened the door of his cell. Martha guessed her excitement – she'd been trying to tamp it down – was more transparent than she had hoped.

"I'm not that predictable," she informed him as she led him away from his cell block.

He seemed disappointed. "No food?"

"You're like my brother," Martha said, taking his elbow as he started to make the predictable turn toward the staircase closest to her office. "All you think about is your stomach. This way," she added, guiding him down the opposite corridor.

"I'm a hell of a lot older than –" Martha stopped suddenly and spun around to face Harvey; the abruptness of the movement nearly threw him off balance.

"Welcome to your new home," she said, an eager quaver to her warm voice. With a slight sideways tilt of her head, she gestured toward an open cell in the asylum's recently renovated medium-security wing.

Harvey's face swung toward the cell and his lips parted. He did not even attempt to speak.

"Twice as much room as your old cell," Martha said, watching his eyes roam the length of the compartment. "Contact with some of the other prisoners – don't worry: I made sure you wound up with some decent neighbors. And you know these guys." Martha nodded toward two guards who now stood grinning by Harvey's side. He had known one of them for nearly twenty years; both men had always been decent to him. "They're in that station right across the hall. And you get yard time, an hour –"

Harvey wet his lips and opened his mouth. His first effort at speech failed, swallowed up in a jerky intake of breath. His second try was an unqualified success.

"Are you out of your mind?" he roared at Martha, who was so startled she took a reflexive step backwards.

"_Harve_ –"

"Take me back to my cell," Harvey demanded.

"But –" Martha's dumbfounded look moved from her agitated patient to the equally unsettled guards. She had been prepared for some skittishness on Harvey's part, but nothing on this scale.

"Take me back _now_," he repeated. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he added savagely to Martha.

She had fought so hard to give him this small amount of freedom that she almost started to argue, but then Martha saw the flash of panic behind Harvey's livid cobalt eyes.

"OK," she said, deflated. With a glance of apologetic farewell to the guards, she started walking him back to the high-security wing.

She should have prepared him, Martha thought as they approached the narrow row of solitary cells. She had become so wound up in her own anticipation of giving him this great gift that she had failed to consider how traumatic any kind of surprise – even a potentially good one – could be to Harvey.

His eyes had been trained on the floor since they'd started away from the other wing; he did not lift them as he brushed by her and strode into the farthest corner of his cell. Martha stood in the door, aching with remorse, wondering how far down the path to hell her good intentions had sent him.

"Harvey, I'm sorry," she said heavily. "I thought this would make you happy."

He looked up sharply. "You're not supposed to be my friend," he said bitterly. "You're supposed to be my doctor."

She had told herself the same thing a dozen times. Martha had reflected upon her feelings for Harvey Dent enough to appreciate how complex they were. There was the irresistible tug of friendship, and also a persistent flicker of ego: _She _had talked him into coming back to Arkham after his last escape; nobody else had ever been able to do that. _She_ had put together the regimen of drugs and therapy that had brought him such remarkable progress. Martha was not immune to these vanities, but she was not selfish enough to let them consume her. Her weakness where Harvey was concerned made her especially cautious in treating him; when she had any doubts, she used Bruce as a sounding board. His experiences with Harvey during his earliest years as Gotham's finest district attorney and his worst years as Two-Face gave him a unique insight on the man Martha considered her premier patient. Bruce didn't hesitate to tell her when he thought a particular course of treatment would be imprudent or when he felt her objectivity might be slipping, but in most cases he believed her judgment to be sound and his faith reassured Martha when she started to doubt herself.

"I'm aware of my responsibilities," Martha said heatedly. "You're ready for this, Harve."

As quickly as it had flared, Harvey's anger fell away and suddenly there was only fear. His face seemed to sag along with his shoulders as he looked desperately at Martha.

"He's _still here_," he said. "Just below the surface. Just under my skin." His fingers drifted to the top of his skull. "You think that he's gone, but he's… he's still here."

"Who?" Martha asked, knowing instinctively that she had to make Harvey say the name.

Harvey faltered.

"Who's still there?" she persisted.

His voice trembling, Harvey said, "I put my hands to my face… and sometimes both sides feel scarred."

Martha was instantly at his side, lifting his hands, running them along his cheeks. "Are they both scarred?" she asked.

"No," Harvey whispered.

"Every negative impulse you have doesn't mean Two-Face is back, Harvey," Martha said earnestly. "You don't need to lock him away in this cell, because he is _not_ here."

Harvey didn't answer. When she released his hands, he let them drop lifelessly against his thighs and stared vacantly out of the open cell door.

He'd had enough – too much – for one day. "That other cell will be ready for you whenever you're ready for it," Martha promised. "When _you_ decide. Just let me know."

His head moved so slightly that she couldn't tell whether he was nodding or shaking his head. Martha touched his arm, then left him standing alone in the prison cell that had somehow become his refuge.

She didn't have a lot of time to dwell on how badly she had screwed up before the call came in from Meera.

* * *

**Next Chapter:** _Panic in the Sky_

* * *


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

Beta-read by the incomparable _arg914_. Special thanks to technial advisor, The Five Foot Ninja.

* * *

Arsenal's gloved fingers gave the barest flick and a wall-length holographic replica of the Earth swelled out from the south wall of the Watchtower conference room.

"Hey, I think I know that place," The Flash said as Roy's hand moved again and the globe started to rotate.

"Might be harder to find your way around in the dark," Arsenal told him humorlessly. "We're getting reports of black-outs of varying intensity from all over the planet."

Martha uncrossed her legs and sat up in her chair. "There's an outage in Metropolis. Superman's on it."

"Yeah, that's one of the bigger ones," Roy said. He wiggled his fingers and a series of web-like markers sprouted from various locations on the globe. "Shanghai is completely in the dark – you can imagine what kind of hell that's causing – and there are a ton of smaller incidents, ranging from city blocks to – to, um…."

He cast a tense, sightless look at Midori, who sensed the attention, despite having spent the meeting staring miserably at a laptop near the far end of the table.

"My toaster worked, but my blender didn't," she mumbled. Martha and Quiver exchanged a glance. In the weeks since Midori had left him, she and Roy had barely been able to look at each other.

Gren leaned forward. "I'm thinking your blender issues are coming from somewhere else. Like a bad cord."

Midori looked up from her notes. "No, I measured the –"

"Let's bag the blender talk," Arsenal cut in brusquely. "I want teams out there helping with the major outages. Superman's got Metropolis under control, but Karachi's burning and Al-Qahirah is in chaos. Gren, Meera – head over to India and do what you can. Flash, Quiver – there's an emergency crew waiting for you in Egypt.

"Everyone rides with Gren," he added, nodding at the Green Lantern. "These disturbances are too random to risk using the _Jav_."

Arsenal turned to Batman, who was standing against the wall just behind Martha's chair. "You two head out for Shang–. What's the problem?" He asked Martha, who was squinting at the front of his crimson tunic.

"You've got dog hair all over you," she said. "What happened to the super-anti-shedding serum?"

"Shanghai," Roy said in a low, terse voice. Martha glanced back at Batman, touched her hip and was instantly swallowed up by her becaped blonde doppelganger. With a final expressionless look at Roy, Batman gave his shoulders a slight, upward thrust and the handhold Superwoman used to transport him snapped out from the back of his fighting suit. As they followed the others out to the hangar, they could hear Arsenal ordering Midori to do what she could to stabilize the planet's power grids and also to trace the source of the disruption.

"Which do you want me to do first?" she asked timidly.

Roy's answer was drowned in the hum of the unsealing airlock, but the irritation in his voice was palpable.

"Oh, God," Wally moaned, looking back toward the conference room with a pained look as the team was enveloped in a sphere of emerald light.

"Business," Batman said firmly.

"Tell that to the big red hairball," Gren muttered. He lifted his comrades through the airlock and pushed on toward Earth.

* * *

Nearly every superhero team on the planet worked to restore power and order to the cities plagued by the mysterious outages. Within days, stability had been re-established in those places where the word could have previously applied and the problem itself seemed to disappear. Midori, having devoted several sleepless days to restoring the power grids of the affected cities, had not been able to trace the source of the disruptions; Arsenal responded to her apologetic confession of failure with indifferent silence.

Three weeks before she had noticed her inexplicably unresponsive blender, Midori had moved back to Hudson, the quaint Catskill Mountain town where she'd lived before moving in with Roy. She was unable to return to her old apartment, which had been rented out, but the landlord also managed a handful of newly acquired town homes. Midori leased the largest one – the advance on the anti-shedding solution she'd developed more than covered the rent – and sluggishly began rebuilding her home laboratory. In an effort to avoid traumatizing him, she had left RJ temporarily behind. By the time the lights went out in Metropolis, she had thoroughly researched trends in joint interstate pet custody and had worked out a schedule that Roy listlessly accepted without examining.

"Did he _want_ this dog?" Lian asked Wally over the phone as she looked around her father's unkempt living room. RJ had deposited several large nests worth of fur throughout the hardwood floors and furniture and in what appeared to be distress over the disappearance of his green bipedal mother, he had gnawed off the leg from one of Roy's couches. Roy had either not noticed this or simply lacked the energy to fix the sofa. It was most likely the latter; he had spent most of his free time collapsed on it and could not have missed the pronounced list as he settled miserably onto its hair-coated cushions.

Wally was through Roy's front door before Lian had set down her cell phone.

"Where is he?" he asked. There was enough fur scattered around the room to put together a new dog, but neither RJ nor Roy were evident.

Lian led Wally down the hallway to her father's bedroom. She stopped at the doorframe and gestured helplessly into the room.

Roy lay on the top of his unmade bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling. Sprawled lengthwise across his body was RJ, muzzle tucked dolefully beneath Roy's unshaven chin. Even from the door, Wally could see the thick layer of long golden hair covering his buddy's olive-colored sweatshirt and black jeans.

RJ released a plaintive sigh and Roy stroked him absently. Alarmed by this display of inter-species despair, Wally took Lian by the arm and pulled her back into the hallway.

"What happened to the shedding cure?" he asked.

"It's not on the market yet," Lian said. "And he won't ask her for it."

Wally groaned softly, then asked, "Can you dog-sit for a while? I've got to get him out of here."

Roy listlessly allowed himself to be directed into the shower and some slightly less hairy clothes, but dinner in Central City, where Linda had agreed to cook one of his favorite meals, had almost no impact on his despondent mood. He barely responded to a few casual questions as he picked at his chicken piccata. After a while, the Wests stopped trying to draw him into the conversation.

A few hours later, Linda pulled her husband into the kitchen.

"Is he going to sit in our living room with his face in his hands all night?" she asked.

"He's really down," Wally said. "I hate to leave him alone."

"Sure, he's down," Linda said. "He just held open the door and let the love of his life walk away. He's not afraid of interstellar monsters or murderous super-powered androids, but making a commitment –"

"He's had two horrible marriages," Wally reminded her. "Commitment hasn't been his best friend."

Linda's eyes softened. "Should I get the guest room ready?"

Wally pressed a grateful kiss against his wife's cheek and returned to the living room. He sank into the couch next to Roy, who looked up and said forlornly, "I try to stay objective when I talk to her, but everything I say comes out so mean."

There was no point in disagreeing with this. "You don't want to drive Midori away from the League," Wally said. "It's going to get easier. Give it some time."

"She doesn't have time," Roy said morosely and Wally realized that their conversation had just veered unexpectedly onto another path. "She has to meet someone and fall in love with him and have his baby. Before her 'window of reproductive viability' closes."

"She so didn't say that to you," Wally said.

"Oh, yes she did," Roy said. A moment later, he added, "She didn't mean anything by it. That's just Midori."

"Pretty brutal, though," Wally said. "She hasn't – gotten started on that little project, has she?"

Roy stood up. "Could you please take me home?" he asked tiredly. "RJ's probably wondering where I am."

* * *

The manor was always quiet, but rarely so silent. Bruce stood by the bottom of the stairs, listening for creak or a whisper that might telegraph the location of his butler and possibly Martha, who should have gotten off work an hour earlier. She had largely assumed Alfred's role of waking Bruce for dinner, in what was an appreciably more pleasant experience for him than the elderly butler's practice of placing a cup of coffee on the nightstand and abruptly switching on the lights.

Ear cocked, Bruce walked slowly toward the kitchen. He stopped at the door, determined that despite the stillness, there were two people positioned in the vicinity of the kitchen table, and pushed open the door.

Martha sat at the table, apprehensively scrutinizing an unopened business-sized envelope. Across from her sat Alfred, the thick lenses of his glasses magnifying the concern in his pale blue eyes.

"What's going on?" Bruce asked, when neither of them reacted to his presence in the doorway. Martha looked up at him.

"A letter from Gotham U," she said.

Bruce dropped into the seat next to hers. "Open it."

"It's a rejection," Martha said, staring at the envelope.

"You don't know that," Bruce said. He wondered how long they'd been sitting there. "It could be a request for an interview."

"They would have called me for an interview," Martha said numbly.

"They may want more information," Bruce said. "Or maybe they're just acknowledging your application." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alfred give a subtle shake of his head. Apparently, he had already suggested these possibilities.

"I received an acknowledgment months ago," she told him. "And if they'd wanted more information, there'd be a return envelope inside this one. There isn't."

Bruce's eyes moved across the thin envelope. He repeated, "Open it."

Martha wet her lips and slid an index finger along the upper corner of the envelope, ripping a jagged line across the top. She fumbled the folded letter from its paper confines, fixed her eyes on the type beneath the letterhead for a few tense seconds, then closed them.

"I would have been their first choice," she said. "But they're closing the department."

Bruce covered her free hand with his and took the letter from her.

"Why?" Alfred asked, his voice filled with disappointment.

"Reallocating their funds," Martha told him hollowly, as Bruce read a slightly elaborated version of this explanation. "No profit in my kind of research."

Except for the potentially massive benefit of reducing the crime rate, which cost American society alone billions each year, Bruce thought, as he folded the letter and placed it onto the table. He studied Martha's downcast expression, tightened his hand around hers and gave Alfred a meaningful glance. The old man pushed back his chair and shambled out of the kitchen.

"You would have been their first choice," Bruce said. "That's something."

Martha nodded bleakly. Bruce could tell that she was struggling not to cry.

"Listen to me," he said. "And when you do, remember that part – that you would have had that job if it still existed."

She nodded at the tabletop, her eyes shimmering. Bruce leaned forward and said, "Even if you'd gotten the job, it would be a long time before you'd have had the chance to do what you wanted to do. You'd have to spend years carrying out other people's research and publishing papers until you built up the academic chops to start conducting your own studies."

Hoarsely, Martha said, "But that's –" Bruce held up a hand before she could finish.

"I know how it's done. But what if you had a chance to bypass all that, to get right to the heart of your research now and to do it here in Gotham?"

She understood exactly where he was going and started to shake her head.

"Hear me out," Bruce said. "This is not about Bruce Wayne setting up some lightweight operation to entertain his girlfriend. I'm talking about an accredited research facility affiliated with the university that just said they would hire you if they could."

Still shaking her head, Martha said, "Bruce…"

"Is what you want to do less important than your ego?" Bruce asked quietly, remembering Jim Gordon's comment about Martha not wanting to feel like a kept woman.

She sat back in her chair. "This isn't about my ego," she said. "It's about us."

He waited.

"This has got to be an equal relationship," Martha said finally. "You buy me a career – a multi-million dollar research foundation – that tips things way out of balance."

"It brings things back into balance," Bruce corrected her. "After you decided to give up everything you've spent your life working for, if necessary, to stay with me in Gotham City."

She looked a little surprised, as though she had never regarded this as a sacrifice. Fueled by her momentary lack of resistance, Bruce added, "Gotham University would co-sponsor the institute through a private grant –"

"From you," Martha said.

"From the Wayne Foundation," Bruce said. "Which sponsors ventures like this every day. The board of directors would have to approve it," he added. "But a thoroughly written proposal should convince them."

"Is this proposal already written?" Martha asked warily.

Bruce shook his head. "That's your job."

It was the right thing to say; he could see it in the relief that washed across her face. He was not just handing this to her. She would have to earn the job – at least somewhat. Bruce wanted to tell Martha that she'd earned it already, through her countless years of devotion to what they both knew would remain a thankless and grossly undervalued undertaking.

"You'd kind of be my boss," Martha said pensively.

Bruce shook his head. "Not at all. In fact, maybe just the opposite." At her questioning look, he said, "I might – at some point in the future – be interested in a job."

As Martha's eyes grew, Bruce added, "The one I have now – I wasn't planning on dying doing it."

He had worked this out years ago; he would someday have to retire. Going out in a blaze of glory was a conceit he could not afford: Nobody could be allowed to claim with any credibility that he had killed Batman. The ensuing battle for control of Gotham could wipe out the lifetime he had devoted to its protection. He would not do that to his city or himself. When Batman could not physically keep up with the demands of the suit, he would hang it up. This would not be for a good, long time, he said emphatically, as he explained this to Martha.

If she agreed to build the institute with him, Bruce continued, he might have the chance to keep up the fight – in a somewhat less hazardous manner.

"I don't know," Martha whispered. "All the paper cuts in this business… tragic."

"Then you'll think about it?" Bruce asked. Martha nodded, a bit too quickly. He said sharply, "Not because you want to give my 'waning years' meaning. Because it would be the right thing for you."

"I am thinking about me," Martha assured him. "And you, too. We'll need someone to sweep the lab floors. I'm not gonna do it."

Bruce pulled Martha onto his lap. "I'll sweep the floors with _you_."

"I need to ask you something though," Martha said seriously.

"Go ahead."

She hesitated. "Did you talk to Adrienne about letting me move Harvey to a better cell?"

It was a question she might have asked weeks ago, but the answer had just become more important.

"No," he said. "I haven't exchanged a word with him since the day we moved you back into your office."

He had, however, put in a call to a friend of his on Arkham's board of governors who agreed with Bruce that moving Harvey to a less restricted cell could highlight the rare success story among the asylum's hugely recidivist population. Bruce was sure his friend had wasted no time in passing on this opinion to Adrienne.

He had done this as much for Harvey as he had Martha, but considering how things had turned out, Bruce realized, it had been a mistake. As Martha apologized for having asked and started to kiss him, he promised himself he would never again run behind-the-scenes interference on her professional life. To do so was to compromise the reputation she was had worked so many years to build.

"We might do this?" he asked between kisses.

"We might," Martha said. "Let me think about it. I love you," she added.

Alfred poked his head through the kitchen door.

"Excuse me," he said. "But as it appears everyone's spirits have been lifted, I should like to get a start on dinner."

* * *

On Colu, living space was largely restricted to modest utilitarian cubicles meant for the individual or rare couple to nourish themselves and sleep. These ascetic dwellings were not the function of an overcrowded society – reproduction was, in fact, diligently controlled – but rather from an ingrained cultural belief that basic bodily requirements did not merit the resources of, say, a state-of-the-art laboratory.

The first time Roy took Midori to Wayne Manor, she asked Bruce how many families lived there. She could not fathom his need to reside in a place with fifteen bedrooms when the mansion had only two occupants. As Roy repeatedly dragged a finger across his throat – a gesture he would explain to her later that evening – Midori informed Bruce in the most helpful of tones that she had observed people living in a cardboard refrigerator box under the highway near Gotham International. She thought they might be willing to help him populate his enormous house.

When the implications of this gaffe had been made clear to her – again, later that night – a mortified Midori toiled for days on a palm-sized, laser-guided grappling gun, which she presented to Bruce as an apology gift. Her remorse went a long way toward explaining why, in the years that followed, she continued to be welcome at Wayne Manor. But she had never ventured there alone until a month after her break-up with Roy.

The dinner invitation had been Martha's idea. In Wally, Dick Grayson and his other lifelong friends, Roy had access to an abundance of emotional support in the aftermath of the split. Midori's social resources were more limited. Gren, who lived a few towns away, had attempted to console her by taking her out for a drink. The effects of this innocent outing quickly became legend throughout the Catskill Mountains as Gren learned the hard way that Coluan physiology and less than a single bottle of beer made for a calamitous combination. A substantial amount of Midori's advance from the pet grooming company went toward paying the damages.

"I want to make sure she's doing OK," Martha had explained. "We said we wouldn't take sides, but Roy's been here."

Bruce had a lower comfort level with Midori than he did Roy. He agreed to the evening with the provision that the visit not interfere with their nightly patrol. This turned out not to be a problem; Midori had monitor duty that night; Martha could drop her off at headquarters after dessert.

"Thank you so much for inviting me," Midori said as Bruce handed her a glass of strawberry soda and seated himself on the couch next to Martha. "RJ is with – I don't have RJ this week," she finished lamely.

"Have you reconnected with your old Hudson crew?" Martha asked. "Ryan and LaTisha –"

"LaTonya," Midori corrected. "A little. But it's hard to spend much time with them because of all of the men."

"The _men_?" asked Martha, whose deceptively light hand on Bruce's leg was suddenly the only thing keeping him from bolting from the room.

"I was going to research the most efficient way of meeting a man who wants to fall in love and get married and have babies," Midori explained, oblivious to the twitch working at Martha's cheeks. "But apparently, there's a newspaper that tells people when members of the Justice League have left their boyfriends. And then men ask them out. It's called _The Weekly Worldwide Truth_ and –"

"Don't let my mother hear you calling that rag a newspaper," Martha cautioned. "So you're dating? Uh – a lot of guys?" Bruce's trapped thigh tensed under her palm.

"I'm _scheduling_ them," Midori said, looking bemused. "But they never seem to show up for the first date."

Martha frowned. "That's weird."

"It is," Midori agreed. "Especially after I've screened them so carefully."

"Screened them?" Martha repeated. The twitch returned to her cheeks.

Midori nodded. "I only agree to dates with men who want to get married and have babies."

Bruce rapped Martha's hand, which was now digging into the flesh above his knee.

"Sorry," Martha said, releasing him. She turned back to Midori, "So you – meet someone in the supermarket or somewhere and he asks if you want to get some coffee and you ask him if he wants to have some babies?"

Midori seemed pleased that Martha had caught on to her system so quickly. "Exactly. I can't waste time dating men who don't want to have babies. This process eliminates –"

She stopped, taken aback, as Martha whirled facefirst into Bruce's chest.

Midori noted her friend's quaking shoulders with distress. "Is she sad?" she asked. "Because my babies won't be Roy's?"

Bruce looked down at Martha, whose tears of silent laughter were rolling down his sweater. "Very," he said gravely. Martha's shoulders shook harder.

"I'm sad, too," Midori said and her yellow eyes began to glisten. "But LaTonya says when I find the father of my children, I'll feel much better."

By the time she had finished this sentence, Midori and Bruce were alone on the couch. Martha had vanished so quickly that Bruce's arms were still encircling the space where she had been sitting.

Bruce got to his feet. "She's overcome," he told Midori, who seemed touched by the depth of Martha's compassion. "I'd better go check on her."

He found Martha flopped on his bed, laughing uncontrollably. "You're a terrible friend," he said mildly.

"Her babies won't be Roy's," Martha gasped. "Her babies won't be _anyone's_." She sat up, still laughing, and wiped her eyes. "I'd better straighten her out."

"We agreed not to take sides," Bruce reminded her.

Soberly, Martha said, "Not telling her is taking sides."

But her tutelage on the finer points of dating would be forcibly delayed. As soon as she and Bruce rejoined Midori downstairs, the living room went dark.

* * *

They didn't make it out onto the streets of Gotham before the first rock shattered a storefront window, but the shock of being plunged into darkness did have some delay on the city's usual complement of looters, gangs and simple vandals.

Midori had brought neither rocket boots nor weapons to dinner. Considering the worldwide scope of the previous outages, it was agreed she should be returned to headquarters. Superwoman ferried her there quickly, then rejoined Batman in the heart of the mayhem, which was, predictably, centered in the Narrows.

A telepathic call from Meera reached Batman less than an hour later.

_We need you at headquarters right away_, she told him.

Batman withdrew his fist from a gang-banger's mouth. "I'm busy."

_Roy says to let the police handle Gotham, _Meera replied. _We just found out what's causing these outages and we need you. Superwoman, too. We're launching the _Javelin_ the moment you get here._

Stopping the disruption at its source might see the lights back on in Gotham sooner. Batman scattered a quartet of hoodlums with a broom-sweep/twist kick combination and popped the fighting suit's built-in handgrip seconds before Superwoman seized it.

* * *

Midori and Quiver were doing a pre-flight count by the time Superwoman and Batman boarded the shuttle; the others – except for Gren – were already buckled in.

"You consider this a safe move?" Batman asked Arsenal. "We lose power in mid-flight and we're dead."

Superwoman put in, "I could fly outside the shuttle and make sure –"

"No you can't," Arsenal said. "We're going into space."

He ordered them to strap in, promising to brief everyone as soon as the shuttle cleared the atmosphere. The _Javelin-13_, like its short-lived successor, was engineered to withstand limited forays into deep space. Its boundaries had not been tested – this being done in increments by Midori, Gren and Quiver – but the team had embarked on several successful trial runs just beyond the outer reaches of Mars.

"Gren's following us in case we run into any problems," Roy said. "Midori's pinpointed the signal behind the blackouts and she thinks it may be a poorly administered distress call."

"From where?" asked Batman, as the shuttle started to lift off.

"The asteroid belt," Roy replied.

"Someone's calling us from an asteroid?" Superwoman asked skeptically.

"That's where the signal's coming from," Midori replied from her pilot's chair. "We don't know what's sending it."

"Could be a ship," Quiver mused as the shuttle pushed through the ionosphere. The sky pouring in from the shuttle's portholes shifted from powder blue to near-black. She glanced over at Midori. "Arm the weapons."

"And the translator," Meera added. She spoke English and French. As an empath, Meera could read intent universally, but her telepathy was limited to the languages she understood.

A craft built with cutting edge Earth-based technology would have taken months to reach Mars, but Midori had crafted the _Jav_'s hyper-fast solar-powered propulsion system from an amalgam of alien technologies. They were rounding the red planet within an hour. Not long ago, this demonstration of scientific prowess would have given rise to profuse boasting from Roy that his girlfriend was a genius. During this trip, he merely dispensed quiet instructions to individual members of the crew and stayed away from the cockpit unless it was necessary to get an updated estimate on their arrival time.

"We're approaching the area where the signal came from," Midori said as the shuttle skimmed the shifting border of the asteroid belt.

Quiver leaned forward. "I don't see anything but rocks."

"Big rocks," the Flash said. "How 'bout we not get too close?"

Midori repositioned the _Jav_ to ensure maximum safety and activated a series of sensory probes. She worked in a largely silent shuttle, zeroing in on the coordinates where she had most recently picked up the signals that had sent a dozen Earth cities into darkness.

It was a painstaking process: radiation and the constant movement of tumbling asteroids made for constant interference. When the breakthrough was finally achieved, it came from the team's least mechanical resource.

"Yes!" said Meera, her voice rich with the triumph of discovery. She turned to Arsenal and added more soberly, "People. They're terrified… suffering."

"Where?" he asked.

Meera shook her head and gestured broadly through the cockpit windshield, where dozens of enormous asteroids loomed.

"Can you be a little more specific?" Arsenal asked sarcastically. He cast an impatient glance at Midori, who was pouring frantically over her readouts.

Meera shook her head. "Sorry." She concentrated for a moment and added, "There's maybe twenty-five of them. Not from Earth. I hope the translator works."

"I've got them," Midori said. She punched a few numbers into her console. What appeared to be an ordinary asteroid popped onto the shuttle's monitor.

"They're inside it," she said. "It's some kind of ship."

"Try to contact them," Arsenal said. "Meera, tell Gren to stand by."

A few minutes later, an excruciatingly loud synthetic voice boomed through the shuttle. "SOMEONE IS THERE?"

"Turn down the volume," Roy told Midori. He rubbed an ear. "And ask why they've been disrupting our planet's power network."

Midori complied. "He says they're on a peaceful scientific mission."

"He's lying," Meera said instantly. "That's not why they're here."

"Tell him he's lying," Arsenal instructed Midori darkly.

Blushing olive, she repeated this message. A few minutes later, she said, "It's a harvesting station. There's a precious metal in some of the asteroids their people use to power their technology."

"And they didn't feel like asking us for it," Roy said. According to interstellar law, the resources within the confines of a solar system belonged jointly to its sentient occupants. With Martian society extinct, Earth had long been the sole beneficiary of a mineral wealth it was nowhere near capable of utilizing.

"Can we rescue them first?" Superwoman asked. "And scold them later?"

"Ask them why they felt they had to plunge half our cities into chaos in order to get our attention," Arsenal directed.

Midori restored the volume. A halting mechanical voice replied, "Regret crude call distress. Device communication broken. Ship breaking. Controls temperature breaking. Dying us."

As Meera predicted, there were about two dozen scientists and miners on the station, which was concentrated within a wedge-shaped segment of the large asteroid. They had been harvesting minerals without incident for almost a year, relatively safe in the stable orbit they'd assumed, when a meteor rammed the outpost, irreparably damaging its temperature controls. Engineers had been struggling futilely for weeks to restore the system. They were steadily losing control over an artificial climate that careened erratically from frigid to broiling. Heatstroke had killed five members of the crew. Within hours, the station's leader continued, they would all be dead.

"Not within hours," Midori said. She looked at Arsenal. "They've got a massive bank of generators they use for mineral processing. They're superheating. They've got less than forty minutes."

"Send Gren in there now," Arsenal told Meera. "Have him evacuate everybody. Tell the outpost commander to get his people ready to move," he added to Midori. "And get coordinates so that we can land and help out."

She nodded, but did not turn back to her console. "It gets worse."

"How?" Frustration was creeping back into Roy's voice.

"Once the generators reach a certain temperature, they're going to explode," she said. "The chain reaction is going to blow apart the asteroid."

"That's fine," he replied. "We'll be out of here by then."

Midori shook her head. "The force of the explosion will send the fragments out of orbit. The placement of the generators and the projected velocity –"

"Get to the point," Batman interrupted.

"There's a more than fifty percent chance of a significant fragment bypassing Mars and slamming into the Earth."

"And we do like the dinosaurs," Roy said. He shook his head in disbelief. "C'mon, land this thing and let's get these people out of here. And figure out how we can prevent that explosion," he added.

With a look that expressed a complete absence of self-confidence in her ability to carry out his latter instruction, Midori relayed Arsenal's message to the outpost's leader and initiated the docking process. By the time the _Jav_ was swallowed up by the rock-shielded doors of the mining station's hanger, Gren had already started the evacuation.

He had conjured a mammoth green solid-light school bus and had boarded nearly everyone who could walk. The outpost's occupants were largely human in appearance, though with a distinctly alien hue and hair texture and a slightly odd kink to their ears. Most of them appeared on the verge of collapsing, no surprise in the hothouse the outpost had become. Temperatures, Midori reported, were nearing 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Is this it?" Roy asked a solid-looking man who greeted them with gratitude radiating from his sweaty mauve face.

"Is eight more," the man said, speaking into the translator Roy held out to him. "But trapped." He gestured toward the west side of the station. "The cave-in traps five engineers." Then he pointed in the opposite direction. "The other cave-in traps three in dormitories."

Roy used a word the translator was programmed to ignore. "You go with your people," he said, jerking his head toward the emerald school bus. Apparently the tradition of going down with one's ship was not a part this particular culture. The outpost's commander bounded up the transport's oversized steps.

"You go with them," Roy told the Flash. "One ER probably won't be able to treat all these people. You may need to carry them somewhere fast – they look half-dead. And hysterical. You go, too," he added to Meera. "Keep them from freaking out while they're sailing through space in a school bus."

The Flash started to object to his assignment, but Arsenal had already turned away from him. He ordered Batman and Superwoman to find the engineers; he and Quiver would go after the people trapped in their living quarters.

"Roy," the Flash said tentatively. "I think I should –"

"Yo, West!" Gren shouted. He gestured impatiently for Wally to get on board. The Flash took a last reluctant look at the backs of his scattering teammates, then shot between the bus's folding green doors.

* * *

Arsenal, Quiver and Batman were wearing light suits designed to offer some protection from extreme temperatures, but the rapidly rising heat could be felt even through this gear. The overloading generators were already causing existing faults within the asteroid to destabilize; small rocks showered down on Quiver and Arsenal as they dashed toward the station's dormitories.

"There," shouted Quiver, pointing to a passageway. But moments before she and Arsenal reached it, a massive tremor shook the station and rocks came crashing around them.

"Shit," she said, as they shook pebbles from their hair and shoulders and looked in frustration at the entryway, which was now sealed off by a mountain of fallen rock.

Midori must have registered the quake; she was on the radio to Arsenal immediately, seeking to confirm his and Lian's safety. She had figured out a way to minimize the chances of an asteroid impacting the Earth.

"We can detonate the generators with our laser-cannon," she said. "But we need to achieve a precision hit before they explode on their own. If we direct the blast, we can minimize the size and trajectory of the asteroid fragments."

Arsenal threw up a hand to shield himself from a curtain of falling rock. "Good. How much time do we have?"

"I wish you'd come back now," she said, adding hesitantly, "No more than ten minutes."

"We'll be back by then," Roy said. "But just in case…. There's no scenario where you don't blow this asteroid before it poses a risk to Earth."

She agreed, her voice quavering. Roy turned back to his daughter, who was attempting to move enough boulders aside to get through the door to the living quarters. It was a losing battle.

"We're going back," Arsenal told her. "There's no way –"

The rest of his words were lost in an avalanche of rock. So were he and Quiver.

* * *

One of the five trapped engineers was dead by the time Superwoman and Batman broke through the landslide of rock, another was unconscious. Superwoman slung him over her shoulder, wrapped an arm around the waist of a second weakened survivor and flew them both back to the _Jav._ The doctor in Martha was already cataloging the sequence of treatments they'd need as she flew back to help Batman recover the remaining engineers, neither of whom could walk unassisted. By the time Batman made it back to the shuttle dragging a half-conscious, grossly overweight man, six minutes had passed since Midori's warning to Roy that only ten remained.

Midori turned to him fearfully.

"I can't reach Roy," she said. "Or Lian."

He nodded. "I'll find them," and disappeared back into the station.

As he raced down the corridor where he'd last seen his teammates, Batman spotted a pair of legs sticking out from a pile of rubble and felt his stomach heave. It was Roy. Refusing to let himself think about what he might find under the heavy stack of stone, Batman flung the rocks away with a wild urgency. Less than a minute later, he was ripping away the protective helmet of Arsenal's suit and pressing bare fingers against the spot in Roy's throat where Batman prayed a pulse would still beat.

The suit had been breached – Roy's body temperature was rising with the heat – but the throb of life that pulsed up from his sweaty flesh was strong and stable. Batman lugged him back to the shuttle, wondering if Superwoman had managed to find Quiver. Lian had last been with Arsenal. If she had been caught under that rockslide, he doubted even Martha would be able to get to her in the precious time they had left.

"Roy!" Midori screamed as Batman deposited him on the floor of the shuttle. She looked desperately as though she wanted to throw herself at him, but she did not step away from the controls.

"He's OK," Batman said. He looked around the shuttle. Superwoman had retrieved the last engineer – there were four of them huddled in the back of the _Javelin_ – but she wasn't in the shuttle.

"She went to look for you and the others," Midori said. And in a voice that begged for forgiveness, she added, "We have to leave. Now."

Batman stared at her. "We can't –"

"We have one minute," Midori told him. "Before it's too late to change the direction of the explosion. If an asteroid hits the Earth, even a small one….

Aching, she repeated, "We have to go."

Batman gave her an incredulous look and lunged at the shuttle door. He nearly collided with Superwoman as she ducked back through the hatch. The heat had somehow affected her hologram projector so that in a weird strobing effect, irregular glimpses of a disheveled Martha Kent were visible.

Indescribable relief flooded him at the sight of Martha, but Batman hadn't forgotten Lian.

"Tell Gardner and West to get back here now," he shouted to Midori over the roar of the shuttle's engines. The Green Lantern might still be able to reach Quiver, he thought. He hoped it would be a rescue and not a recovery.

Martha looked around the cabin, blinking. "Where's Quiver?"

"Strap in," Midori called. Tears poured down her face as her hands played over a succession of switches and the _Javelin _began to shudder. Martha shot a horrified look from Midori to Batman, whose face betrayed a rare hopelessness.

"Time's up," he told her. "Get these people strapped in."

Martha's eyes widened as she glanced out the shuttle door, then looked back, aghast, at Batman.

"I can't leave Lian," she said frantically. Midori flipped a switch and the hatch started to slowly shut.

And then before he could tell her that they had no choice, that the survival of the Earth depended on them leaving immediately, and that between the cave-in and the heat, Lian was probably already dead, Martha gave him a look that might have said, "I'm sorry," or possibly even, "I love you" and she stepped back through the closing shuttle door.

Batman threw himself at the hatch, but the lock had already sealed. The _Javelin_ started to lift up through the deserted hangar.

"Turn around," he roared at Midori. Tears whipped across her face as she shook her head. She slapped a red switch on her primary console, remotely activated the hangar doors and pointed the shuttle into space.

Batman dove for the ship's controls. He slammed into an invisible wall; Midori had thrown a force field up around the cockpit.

"They're _two people_," she said piteously as he smashed a fist against the transparent barricade. "Millions, maybe billions could die …."

A numbness colder than space coursed through Batman's desperate heart. As he let his forehead fall against the invisible barrier, he saw flashes of Martha disappearing in a rolling explosion of green smoke… of making love to her for the first time… of holding her in his arms by a tropical waterfall as they watched an old year turn new.

"No," he whispered. "Please, Midori."

But as the endless stream of tears cascaded town her salt-tracked cheeks, Batman's sobbing teammate aimed the _Javelin_ toward a predetermined point just outside the asteroid belt where she would swing the shuttle around and blow the outpost – and her most cherished friends – into dust.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Lost in Space_

* * *


	15. Chapter 15

Valiantly beta-read by _arg914_!

* * *

Special thanks to LJ artist extraordinaire _batfan sarah_ for her brilliant renditions of many **_Truth and Justice_** characters. Take a look! www . flickr . com/photos/15861536N06/sets/72157603839483967/

* * *

As the _Javelin_ hurtled away from the asteroid-based outpost where Superwoman and Quiver had been abandoned, Batman fought to come up with a way to save them. The possibility of watching Martha die was unendurable; he could not let it happen.

He glanced at the monitor and saw that the station was shrinking, disappearing in the cluster of asteroids surrounding it, and he knew it would be moments before Midori used the shuttle's laser cannon to blow it apart. By controlling the impending explosion of the outpost, she would save the Earth from possible annihilation. She would also kill her best friends.

When Meera's voice cut into Batman's roiling mind, he was afraid he might be imagining it.

_We're here. What's going on?_

"Martha's trapped – Superwoman and Quiver are trapped on the outpost," he told her. "Midori's about to destroy it. "Tell Gardner… West…."

Roy stirred on the floor beside Batman. Through cracked, filthy lips, he mumbled, "What…?"

_We're at the station,_ Meera told Batman. _The Flash has gone after them. _

Midori sobbed, "I have to fire. _Please_…."

"Give them a few seconds," Batman ordered, aware that these seconds were not available to Midori. "Meera, does he have them?"

_Almost_, she replied. _I'm tracking Martha_. _She's still alive._

Roy, who was fully conscious now and apparently in on Meera's psychic party line, asked weakly "Lian…"

The telepath hesitated. _She could be unconscious. I'm getting a lot of interference…._

Meera could tell the difference between unconscious and dead. Roy started to weep.

"Roy," cried Midori. "I have to…."

_We've got them, _Meera announced. _Just another few seconds, Midori._

But Midori had already lost her best shot; she could not wait any longer. As her chest heaved with the weight of her anguish, she readjusted the laser cannon a final time and fired at the outpost. Batman watched in disbelief as the asteroid burst into thousands of pieces.

He gazed numbly at the monitor as Roy's sobs welled up from the floor of the _Javelin_. Midori scrutinized her readouts, fingered a few buttons, rechecked her figures and then crumpled onto floor beside the control panel.

"I had to," she whimpered. "I'm so sorry."

Emptiness deeper than anything he had ever experienced flooded Batman. All of them dead? Martha… and Wally, Meera and Gren as well as Lian? He could barely hear his surviving teammates as their mews of grief rose up around him.

And suddenly, Gren's voice thundered into their heads. _What the _fuck_ was that?_

_Sorry, _Meera added. _He insisted on saying that himself. Martha says to get the crash cart ready. We're docking with you in a few seconds._

"She might be alive," Roy said, as Midori looked up in astonishment. He pushed up against the cabin floor in an attempt to get to the crash cart, but his injuries overpowered his adrenaline and he fell back against the deck.

"I'll get it," Batman said numbly. He didn't move.

_Open the hatch._ Meera ordered. Without moving from the floor, Midori reached up and touched a switch. The Flash burst into the shuttle, a flaccid Quiver in his arms. Martha was behind him, rocketing toward the crash cart as Wally laid the battered Lian next to Roy.

Roy rolled toward his daughter. Grasping her wrist, he whispered, "She's warm."

"Nobody was getting cold in that furnace," Martha said grimly as she knelt by Lian. "Wally, break out every ice pack in the kit. Get out of my way, Roy."

It wasn't until she began administering mouth-to-mouth that Roy seemed to realize his daughter was nowhere near out of danger.

"Please save her, Martha," he begged. A dozen cold packs were suddenly piled on Lian, around her, and then Wally was gently dragging Roy back so that Martha had room to work.

Cursing, she grabbed a thick, pre-loaded syringe at super-speed and jammed it into Lian's neck. Another blur of motion and the front of Lian's costume was ripped away and Martha was rubbing lube between a pair of defibrillator paddles.

"Clear," she snapped and pressed the paddles against Lian's bruised chest. The redhead's limp torso jerked upward, then dropped back onto the steel deck with a sickening thump. Martha's fingers moved automatically to the pulse in her throat.

"Fuck," she muttered angrily and re-applied the paddles. Lian's body jumped again. Ignoring Roy's pleas, which were now going out to God as well as his team doctor, Martha reached for her roommate's throat and groped for a pulse. After a few endless seconds, she squinted down at Lian's face, just as the redhead began to cough.

Lian's eyes fluttered for a moment and then closed.

"Ow," she whispered.

Martha started to laugh. "You bitch," she said to Lian as she flopped onto the floor beside her.

"Oh, God, Martha, thank you," Roy said. As he reached for his daughter's hand, he asked tremulously, "Will she have brain damage?"

Martha rolled onto an elbow and gave him a reassuring grin. "You mean more brain damage than she had before? Nah, I kept her heart going the old-fashioned way –" She mimed the act of performing chest compressions. "– until Wally grabbed us."

She sat up suddenly and looked at the back of the cabin. Four petrified lavender faces were staring at Lian's supine body. Martha reached for a blanket and covered her roommate's abundant chest. "You know, you guys should probably strap in," she amiably informed the stupefied engineers.

* * *

Martha knew something was wrong as soon as she looked at Batman. She watched from her position on the floor as he walked dumbly to a far corner of the shuttle and strapped himself in. She was at his side in an instant.

"Hey," she said, laying a gentle hand on the chest plate of his fighting suit. He yanked away and stared at the back of the couch in front of him.

"Bruce," she whispered. She saw the torment brimming behind his expressionless mask and remorsefully recognized that she had caused it. Her decision to go after Lian had sent him careening through hell.

Batman shook his head. He couldn't talk to her. Martha watched him for a few stricken seconds and then went to check on Roy and the injured aliens.

* * *

The avalanche that had broken Arsenal's collarbone and all the ribs on his left side had not buried Quiver, but it had trapped her. As she tried to dig herself out, another shower of falling rock had torn through her suit, breaching it. Temperatures by then had reached a smothering 140 degrees. Lian was still moving rock when she passed out; the bruises on her body were largely a result of Martha's chest compressions.

Most of the miners had boarded Gren's school bus suffering from heatstroke. By the time they had landed on Earth, they were nearly catatonic from the doubly traumatic experience of flying through space in such a bizarre contraption, then unexpectedly zooming back to their doomed outpost in time to experience its detonation. Meera had her hands full.

The Flash joined her and Gren as soon as the Javelin landed at the League's upstate New York headquarters, ferrying hysterical, dehydrated aliens to emergency rooms throughout the tri-state area. Superwoman flew Lian, then Roy, directly to Episcopal-Presbyterian Medical Center in East Gotham, where, as Dr. Martha Kent, she'd be best able to oversee their care. By the time she returned to headquarters, the injured engineer and his colleagues had received interim care from a Batman and Midori who could not look at each other. Superwoman noticed that their unwillingness to make eye contact seemed to extend to her.

As soon as she returned from evacuating the last engineer, Martha switched off her hologram projector – she had replaced her broken one with a spare as soon as they reached headquarters – and searched for her lover through a building that had gone disturbingly quiet. She found him alone in the hangar.

She immediately started to apologize for the scare she'd given him.

"Just take me home," Batman said softly, cutting her off. He turned away and Martha realized with dismay that he had been searching for a way to get back to Gotham without her.

She hoped the ride back would give him a chance to think things through. She could not imagine that he was angry at her for defying his orders on the shuttle, or that he would consider a pick-up on a teammate needlessly reckless. Batman had survived closer calls over the years. She had once watched him recover the body of an obviously dead firefighter seconds before a chemical fire sent a blocks-long munitions plant up in a roar of rolling black smoke. Lian had been her best friend all of her life, Martha thought, as she deposited Batman onto the floor of the cave. She could not have abandoned her. Bruce _had_ to understand that.

But he did not remove his mask, as he nearly always did, and when she came near him, he averted his eyes, training them on a rocky expanse of wall near the far end of the cave.

"Please don't be mad at me," Martha implored.

He said quietly, "I'm not mad at you." But he kept his eyes locked on the wall as he added, "You did what you were supposed to do."

She allowed a brief sense of relief at these words, hoping she was misreading his faint monotone and the rigid way he was holding his body away from hers as he spoke.

"Want to go take a shower?" she asked hopefully. The small act of normalcy would go a long way toward reassuring Martha that everything between them was OK.

Batman shook his head. "You should probably go check on the Harpers."

The apprehension that had so briefly left Martha returned to her with double the force. He was telling her to leave.

"Please talk to me," she pleaded.

He looked at the floor. Barely audibly, he said, "I can't.

"You should go," he added, stepping away as she reached out for his arm. "Check on them."

She refused to let herself panic. _He just needs time_, Martha told herself. Fighting a ballooning sense of dread, she said hoarsely, "I'll come back later to tell you how they are."

He neither moved nor answered.

"I'll be back in a little while," Martha repeated.

This time, she thought he might have nodded. Or maybe, she thought, as she flew out of the cave, he had shifted a little farther away from her and it had just seemed like his head was moving.

* * *

She tried to compose herself before she walked into his hospital room, but Roy took one look at Martha's distraught face and for an instant was certain that his daughter was had died.

"Lian?" he asked fearfully.

Martha gave him a vacant look. "She's fine."

Roy's shoulders sank back into his pillows and he winced as the slight movement jostled his throbbing collarbone. He rolled his head toward Martha.

"What happened?" he asked examining her trembling hands, as she reached for his chart.

"Nothing," she said, staring blindly at the admitting physician's notes before closing the thin folder and walking over to the foot of his bed. Roy continued to study her as Martha fiddled with one of his IV lines.

"Is it Bruce? Your face just answered for you," he added, as Martha failed a swift attempt to throw up the kind of deadpan mask that came so naturally to her lover.

Hungry for reassurance that Bruce merely needed time to deal what had happened on the outpost, Martha told Roy about the upsetting exchange in the cave. His reaction was almost as frightening as Bruce's refusal to talk to her.

"Apologize," he said immediately. "Tell him you won't do it again."

Shocked, Martha asked, "You think I should have left Lian?"

"Of_ course _not," Roy said, looking nauseated at the suggestion. "But, Martha," he added. "You didn't see what it did to him last time. When Parallax… when we all thought you were dead…."

"I know," Martha said. "But –"

"You _don't _know," he said harshly. "You just heard about it.

"Go back there now," he added. "And promise him you'll be more careful."

Martha drew her arms across her chest and her eyes began to shimmer. "This wasn't about being reckless."

"I know," Roy said. "And so does Bruce. Do it anyway."

She did not see how she could promise such a thing, Martha thought as she flew back to Wayne Manor. During the time she and Bruce had been together she _had_ become more careful. His exhaustive training had honed her mind along with her reflexes. She saw options while fighting now that had never been apparent to her before. But it had been more than just the training. Martha had seen the toll her supposed death had taken on those who loved her and she was determined never to put Bruce or her family through that sort of anguish again. But some things couldn't be controlled, some compromises couldn't be made. She was one of the most powerful members of the Justice League. She couldn't back away when lives were at risk, especially when one of those lives belonged to a member of the team.

Alfred was lifting a cinnamon-walnut loaf from the bread-maker she and Bruce had bought him for Christmas when Martha slipped nervously from the service entrance into the kitchen. The thick smell of sweet, fresh bread seemed to evaporate when she saw the old butler's worried face. He looked up as she closed the screen door softly behind her, a question in his pale eyes.

"Hey," she said faintly. "Is he, um…?" She gestured toward the upper floors.

"What happened?" Alfred asked anxiously.

Martha wasn't sure he would respond any better than Bruce to the news that she had almost been killed again. "I kind of upset him. Is he upstairs?"

Alfred shook his head. "Downstairs."

Martha's eyes moved to the deco clock that hung above the stove. The cave was Bruce's refuge. That he remained there for nearly two hours after she had left him was not a good sign.

In seven months together, they had barely had a disagreement, not a real one, Martha reflected as she wound her way hesitantly down the narrow stone staircase. She had anticipated a bumpier ride; it would have been naïve to expect a relationship with Bruce to go smoothly. And yet it had, until now, largely because of his willingness to take a greater chance with Martha than he had with any of the women who had preceded her. He had done so because he trusted her. In doing her job had she somehow violated that trust?

Bruce was staring at a large live map of the security grid that surrounded the mansion when she stepped into in the main chamber of the cave. He had pushed back his mask, but he still wore the fighting suit. He looked from the red dot he'd been studying as it bobbed down the stairs to the woman it represented.

"Hi," Martha said, trying to convey with her eyes how much she regretted having brought him such misery.

He looked back at her this time. "Hi."

"I can't tell you how sorry –" Martha began.

Bruce held up his hand. "One question." He lowered his face for a moment as if reconsidering whatever it was he planned to say, then met her eyes again. "If I quit the Justice League, will you?"

Her mouth tumbled open. The League was more than just a band of superheroes to Martha; he might as well have been asking her to abandon her family. "No," she said, her voice ragged and small.

He nodded. This was the answer he had expected, she realized. But it wasn't the one he had wanted.

"OK," Bruce said in low tone that suggested something had just been settled.

Tremulously, Martha asked. "What do you mean, 'OK'?"

Bruce turned back toward the security grid and a familiar rigidity claimed his features. "I've seen you die twice now," he said. "I can't wait around to see if the third time's a charm."

Once, when they were training, he had swept her to the floor. Martha, wearing the bracelet that suppressed her powers, had landed badly, hitting the mat with such force that for a frightening second she thought her lungs had exploded. She had not believed anything could hurt as much as that fall. She had been wrong: Bruce's words took her down with a harder, crueler efficiency.

"You've _never_ seen me die," Martha told him. "And I think you'd have realized by now that I'm not that easy to kill." She added, "You're the one who said we couldn't let our feelings interfere with what we do."

Bruce lifted his chin in a terse nod, but did not answer her.

"Should I have let Lian die?" she asked. "Would you have been all right with that?"

The mask he had been grappling to hold in place slipped for long enough to see the pain in his eyes. "No."

Martha chanced a step closer to him. "I love you, Bruce. Everything we've –." She closed her eyes against the tears. "Don't be so fast to throw it away."

In its deepest recesses of the cave, she could hear the faint rustle of wings. Bruce unclasped his utility belt and laid it across the security console.

"I've got to think," he mumbled.

Spoken by anyone else, these words might have offered a measure of hope, but Martha knew Bruce would think himself right out of her arms. He was running away, the way he had a year earlier when he had insisted it would be wrong for them to be together. Even then, he had not closed himself off the way he was doing now. The shock of this sudden turnaround was almost suffocating. In the course of a few hours, Martha had nearly lost her best friend and now might lose her lover.

Remembering Roy's advice, she promised desperately, "I'll be more careful."

"No, you won't," he said. And he walked away, leaving Martha in the middle of a cave that had never felt so cold or so dark.

* * *

The drugs his doctor had prescribed for the pain were non-narcotic, but as a recovering heroin addict, Roy felt uncomfortable using any sort of analgesic and had taken it upon himself to clamp off his IV line. Within minutes, he realized this was a mistake. All of the ribs on his left side were broken and without the Ibuprofen drip, breathing had become sudden torture. He tried to remove the clamp from the tubing, but this required that he reach for the IV pole with his left arm. The fractured ribs alone would have made this an excruciating exercise; the left side of Roy's collarbone was also broken. He knew he should have called for a nurse, but he did not want to hear a lecture for having cut off the drip in the first place. Jamming his teeth together to offset the pain, Roy reached shakily out toward the intravenous line and knocked both it and the nurse call button onto the floor.

As the sweat bit into his eyes and his ribs started to scream, Roy wondered how girlie it would be for the leader of the Justice League to yell for a nurse.

"Roy?"

He dropped his head back against the stiff pillow and that hurt, too. "Ah, Midori. Come here for a minute, will you?"

She had the line flowing in seconds and even managed to find a safety pin in the near-empty nightstand drawer so she could secure the tubing to his hospital nightgown. It took a while for the pain to subside, but Midori didn't seem to mind waiting. She seemed withdrawn and not at all eager to talk. And yet she was here, alone with him for the first time since she had moved back to Hudson.

Maybe she had had a change of heart, Roy thought. Maybe seeing him wounded like this had made Midori realize how much she loved him and how good they had been together before this whole baby nightmare started.

She stood by the window, toying with the mini-blinds and Roy noticed that the sun was coming up. As Midori's lime-colored finger dragged against one of the sparkling strips of white metal, a slender prism of light illuminated her face and he saw with concern that there were gray circles beneath her eyes.

Frowning, he said, "Come here, babe."

The endearment slipped from his mouth unplanned, but Midori seemed not to notice. After a momentary hesitation, she returned to his bedside.

"You OK?"

Her eyes wandered to a spot just past his right ear. "You're the one who's hurt."

"You don't look so great, yourself," Roy said gently.

Midori folded her arms across her chest and tucked her chin into her chest. Barely audibly, she said, "I want to resign."

Roy jerked into what would have been an upright position if his ribs hadn't stopped him. The pain was nearly blinding.

"You can't," he managed. "We need you."

Tearfully, Midori said, "I almost killed everyone. On purpose."

"You did exactly what you had to do," he told her. "Under unimaginable pressure. I've never seen anyone braver than you were last night."

"You were unconscious through most of it," she reminded him. For once, her characteristic tendency to take things literally didn't make Roy laugh. He suddenly missed her with an aching intensity.

"I woke up in time to tell you to hold your fire," he said. "Did I?"

"No," she whispered. Tears began sliding down her cheeks.

"My daughter means more to me than anyone in the world," Roy said. "And –"

"I almost killed her," Midori said brokenheartedly. "I almost killed Lian and once I thought I could be her mother."

Roy did have to choke back a surprised laugh at this bizarre revelation. Lian was three years younger than Midori and about thirty times as sophisticated. But he guessed, technically, if they _had_ gotten married….

"I was going to say, that if you'd hesitated another second, I'd have ordered you to fire," he said. "And I'd have figured out how to live with myself later. Lian grew up in this life. She knew exactly what she was doing when she put that costume on for the first time. I love her, Midori," he said emotionally. "But there were six billion lives at stake. And for Lian, Martha – all of us – the people we protect come first."

Midori dragged a palm against her eyes. "Batman hates me."

"I'm sure he doesn't," Roy said. He just hoped Bruce wasn't so angry with himself that he ended up taking it out on her. "He knows more than anyone about making hard choices."

There was one more hard choice, he realized, that had to be made this morning.

"Can you forgive me?" He asked, looking away. "For the way I've been treating you?"

"Yes," Midori said in a tiny voice.

"It won't happen again," Roy said. "I just – It won't happen again," he repeated.

Neither of them spoke for a while, then Midori asked if he needed anything. She wanted to look in on Lian before morning visiting hours were over.

"Wait," Roy said as she started walking away. "You'll stay?"

"For now," Midori said. She disappeared through his hospital door and Roy felt an ache in his chest that had nothing to do with his broken ribs.

* * *

When Bruce left her in the middle of the cave, Martha had not been sure what to do. She had come to believe Wayne Manor was her home, while the apartment she shared with Lian had become a remote, oversized walk-in closet, a place to grab a shower and a change of clothes on her way to work. Bruce had encouraged this feeling; he had been urging her for months to move more of her things into the mansion.

But now he did not want her there. In a daze of hurt and exhaustion, Martha flew back to her empty apartment. She had fifteen minutes to get to work. She showered and dressed in half that time, feeling all the while as if she was sleepwalking. Her numb mind told her she should eat breakfast; her stomach mutinied at this suggestion. She walked through the gates of asylum with two minutes to spare.

Other than the weeks Adrienne spent persecuting her, the madhouse that was Arkham had always been a retreat for Martha when other parts of her life became difficult. She could dive into her work with an almost meditative intensity, emerging hours later feeling she'd actually done something worthwhile. But as the phones in her pocket and on her desk failed to ring, her e-mail inbox remained empty and lunchtime dissolved into afternoon without the unannounced visit from Bruce she had longed for, Martha felt that the asylum had become as much a prison for her as it was for her patients.

She did not know whether she wanted Bruce's apology or his pardon. In the balance, she did not care; she would take either, and they would set things straight later.

A few of her colleagues noticed her low spirits – one asked if Adrienne was bothering her again. Martha's patients tended to be self-absorbed and were less in tune with her mood. Even Harvey, who noticed everything, took a while to realize that the desolation she was failing to camouflage did not somehow center around him.

"Are you still obsessing over what happened last week?" he asked impatiently. "I told you to forget about it. You can't help being a relentless Pollyanna."

Martha tried to play along with his misinterpretation of her mood. "Well, I felt really badly about it."

Harvey looked up sharply. "What's really bothering you?"

"Just that," said Martha, pretending to root through her desk drawer for a pen she didn't need. "I feel really guilty –"

"Martha," Harvey said firmly.

Attempting to regain control of the conversation, she asked, "How are you sleeping? Any more nightmares?"

"Stop that," he scolded. "Talk to me."

"I'm supposed to be your doctor, not your friend," Martha reminded him.

Harvey reached for her hand. "Too late."

* * *

Alfred had been troubled to see Bruce climb the stairs to his bedroom alone that morning; when the elderly butler hadn't heard from Martha by late afternoon, he called her. She could not explain on an unsecured line what had happened, but he did get more from her than Harvey had.

"I kind of stuck my neck out," she said. "I _had_ to. But…" Alfred's eyebrows knitted together as he heard Martha's voice break. "He's pretty upset with me."

"Come for dinner," the old man urged. "And talk to him."

"I can't," Martha said. "I don't think I could take it if he told me to go away."

Alfred drew up indignantly. "If he should say that to you," the nonagenarian butler announced, "I would thrash him into oblivion."

But he could not convince her to come. Alfred stood thoughtfully by the phone for a few minutes after they said their goodbyes, then took the service elevator to the second floor. He wondered if Bruce understood how upset Martha was; he had never seemed indifferent to her feelings before.

Alfred fumbled with the key to the master bedroom and noticed there was light coming in through the bottom of the door. When he opened it, he saw that Bruce was awake, lying on top of the still-made bed in a pair of pajama trousers. His arms were crossed behind his head and he was staring at the ceiling.

"Would you like to talk?" Alfred asked.

Bruce shook his head. "Don't get involved in this."

"If this is about Miss Martha, I regret to say I am already involved," Alfred said. "As I care for her dearly."

Bruce contemplated the ceiling for a few more seconds, then swung his feet over the side of the bed. "She almost made it possible for you to attend her funeral again."

As the muscles tightened around his bony chest, Alfred replied, "Quite disconcerting, of course. But nothing I haven't come to expect from the last thirty years I've spent with you."

Bruce walked over to a chest of drawers and pulled out a faded gray t-shirt. "I know I'm being a hypocrite," he said.

"I wish you would tell me what happened," Alfred said. "She couldn't over the telephone."

"I can't either," Bruce said. He pulled the t-shirt over his head. "Don't bother making dinner. I'm going out."

"To see Miss Martha?" Alfred asked.

Bruce picked at a loose thread at the hem of the t-shirt. "No," he said.

"You don't care that you're hurting her, then?" the elderly butler asked disapprovingly. He regretted his tone immediately: A helpless kind of torment surged in Bruce's eyes and Alfred recognized the eight-year-old boy who had seen his parents murdered.

"The longer you let this fester, the more miserable you will be," Alfred advised. "And the harder this will be for you to fix."

"I don't know if it can be fixed," Bruce said. He avoided the old man's look of dismay, mumbled something about a shower and headed into the bathroom.

* * *

Martha went back to the hospital that evening and found Lian sitting in a chair in her father's room, watching a Spanish soap opera. A team of doctors had pored over her – a little more enthusiastically than necessary, she added peevishly – and pronounced her healthy. She hated hospitals. She wanted Martha to take her home.

The doctor in Martha would have preferred that Lian stay at least one extra day, but over the years she had been through similar scenarios with her stubborn roommate and knew she would lose the argument. Martha the woman was grateful for the comforting presence of her best friend. She did not look forward to returning her apartment alone.

Roy wanted out as badly as his daughter, but his orthopedist insisted he remain for a few more days. The muscles around his ribs hurt even worse on this second day, which meant breathing was about as fun for Roy as wrestling with an elephant. Talking wasn't much easier. He assessed Martha's quiet despair and the reason for it with keen eyes and when she kissed him goodbye, he pressed his lips slowly against the back of her hand in a gesture meant to reassure her as much as thank her.

"Hang in there," he said.

"I guess Bruce would have rather you'd left me for dead – which you should have," Lian said to Martha over dinner that night. She was fully aware of the circumstances of her rescue. Midori had come to her room to make a full confession.

"No," Martha said, picking with a chopstick at her vegetable lo mein. "He's the one who sent the others after you."

"He sent them after you," Lian countered.

Martha shook her head. "I was in the shuttle when he called Gren."

Lian looked at her roommate's despondent face and relented. "He'll get over it."

Martha shrugged and pushed the bowl of noodles into the center of the table.

Despite her claim to have fully recovered, Lian fell asleep on the couch less than a third of the way through the first _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ episode in a video marathon the women had planned. She was already in her pajamas. Martha carried her to her room and tucked her beneath her red satin quilt, then returned to the living room to watch the rest of the disc.

The old show was one of Clark's favorites and he had introduced Martha to the series when she started high school. She had quickly identified with the girl superhero who was forced to keep her world-saving activities a secret. Not long ago, Martha had resorted to sexual bribery to get Bruce to watch a few episodes. He admitted to not hating it, but couldn't get past what he described as chronic mishandling of weapons by the lead actress. Martha had found this complaint endearing: It was pure Bruce.

The memory rendered the video from a meager distraction to another reminder that the love of her life now believed being with her wasn't worth the emotional price. Martha pointed the remote at the television and watched as blackness swallowed the screen.

She spent hours trying to get to sleep; when she finally succeeded, she had the first nightmare she'd had in nearly a year. In the security of Bruce's arms, Martha had always slept peacefully. Tonight she'd managed to lose his leg again; this time watching helplessly as it was carried off by a swarm of glittering blue butterflies.

* * *

Lois' fingers were pummeling her keyboard when she realized she had repeated a verb and stopped to access an online thesaurus. As she waited for her browser to open, her gaze fell just past the monitor to a tiny picture frame that had sat on her desk for almost twenty-five years.

Smiling nostalgically, Lois reached for the frame, which surrounded the tiny fingerprint of a five-year-old Martha. A few feathery lines had been added by a kindergarten teacher, so the inky oval resembled a baby duck. It had been the first of many school-made Mother's Day presents and Lois' favorite. She propped the frame in front of the keyboard and dialed Martha's number.

She had been picturing her little girl, a child whose voice was perennially filled with joy, but the tone of the woman on the other end of the line was frail and hollow and Lois knew immediately that something was horribly wrong.

"Everything's fine," Martha replied robotically, in response to the obvious question.

"You don't sound fine," Lois replied. She strode into the master bedroom, where a damp Clark was pulling on a pair of jeans. He gave his wife a curious look and she tapped her ear, indicating he should use his super-hearing to follow the conversation. His face filled with concern at the sound of Martha's heartsick voice.

Lois went through a litany of the things that could be upsetting Martha and managed to eliminate every possibility but one.

"Do you want me to come down there, baby?" Lois asked, watching Clark pantomime the act of flying and mouth the word "now?"

But Martha once again claimed she was fine. She was getting ready to go on monitor duty. She would see everyone on Sunday.

"Today's Sunday, Martha," Lois said quietly.

"Oh," Martha replied. "Sorry then; I can't come. I – I have to go."

Lois switched off the phone and sat on the edge of the bed.

"I guess what you were waiting for finally happened," she told her husband. "It must be over."

His face was a mirror of how she felt. The presumed end of this abhorrent relationship brought Clark none of the relief she was sure he had expected: The magnitude of his daughter's suffering outweighed any anticipated sense of solace.

"She sounded…," Clark said powerlessly. He walked out of the bedroom.

Lois found him sitting shirtless in the rooftop terrace, oblivious to the biting February winds. She thought about joining him, then walked into the kitchen and pulled out a saucepan. She had been married to Clark long enough to know when he needed to talk and when it was better to leave him alone. Lois filled the pan with milk and dropped in a few wedges of Mexican chocolate. As she wondered whether she should want to kill Bruce, she transferred the heated mixture to the blender and whipped the drink into a cinnamon-colored froth.

_Why didn't we realize we were going to feel like this_? Lois asked herself. She and Clark had wanted the relationship over so badly that they had not considered how the ending of it would affect Martha.

Lois carried the steaming mug of spiced hot chocolate – Clark's favorite comfort drink – out to the terrace. She placed the cup on the glass table next to his chair, kissed him on the forehead, and then went back into her office. She filed the editorial she was writing without attempting to finish it and gazed for a long time at the tiny fingerprint duck.

* * *

Superwoman burst through the Watchtower airlock and slid gasping to the hanger floor. She hardly ever attempted to fly to the station anymore: Between the flight itself and the time it took for the airlock to unseal itself, she barely had enough air to make the trip.

_Why do you do that to yourself_? Meera asked calmly. Martha switched off the hologram. She wondered if Meera could sense a shrug.

"You're early," the telepath told her when Martha took a seat next to her at the monitor. "By about an hour. And you're hurting," she added, frowning.

"Can you take it away?" Martha asked. "Like you did for Hal Jordan?"

Sympathetically, Meera replied, "You know better."

Martha gave a wretched nod.

"Talking sometimes helps," Meera added.

Martha shook her head. "I don't think I can talk about it without crying."

"So cry," Meera said.

But she didn't. Martha had come close over the last few days, but the tears had never made it past her eyes. Meera listened, reaching for her friend's hand once, when Martha's voice quavered, looking concerned, but not particularly surprised.

"I must have been deluding myself," Martha concluded. "Everything… the way we've been together… I thought he loved me enough… that if there was a problem…."

"Martha…," Meera said.

"I can't believe he would let me hurt like this," Martha said.

Meera leaned back and said with unexpected sternness, "When you're finished hero-worshipping Bruce, you might put on your shrink hat and consider that he's got a whopping case of post-traumatic stress."

This was Meera's specialty. She saw dozens of patients each week who suffered from the disorder, most of them were crime victims and former soldiers.

"I know that," Martha said. "I've gone out of my way to be careful since Parallax. I know what it did to him when he thought I was dead…."

Meera was shaking her head. "No," she said. "Since he was…" She looked up at Martha. "How old was he when he saw his parents murdered?"

"Eight," Martha said.

"Since then," Meera said.

Martha looked away. "That moment shaped his whole life… but he became Batman. He's raised two incredible men. He's managed an industrial empire. He's –"

"He's coped extraordinarily well," Meera said. "His degree of functionality is amazing, especially when you consider how his losses kept piling up. You said he's raised two good men. I don't know them very well, but you mean the man married to Starfire? And Robin?"

"Yeah," Martha said.

"Wasn't there another one?" Meera asked. "An adopted son who was murdered?"

Martha shut her eyes. "Yes. By the Joker."

"Can you even count the number of allies and friends he's seen crippled or killed?" Meera asked.

Martha shook her head again.

"You know how he's kept himself going," Meera said.

"Yeah," Martha said. "He's made everything about the mission."

"And he's stayed alone." Meera said. "I don't know him at all personally, but I've been with the League for seven years now and…" She groped for the words. "This is kind of hard to explain. Most people have this space inside them… these pools of openness that allow them to let other people in. This isn't metaphorical – I can see those spaces.

"Take you," she added. "You've got these huge reservoirs of openness. Too many, probably…."

"And Bruce has none?" Martha asked.

Meera looked at her. "He had very little. Until you came back to the League."

Martha didn't argue that Bruce had hated her that first year. She knew better now.

"He was so contracted… so closed off," Meera said. "He would just sit at the conference table – well, stand behind it, mostly, in the farthest corner of the room, his hands folded across his chest –"

"He still does that," Martha said.

"No," Meera said. "He stands behind you."

"And those spaces?" Martha asked. "Of receptivity?"

"The closer he's gotten to you, the more they've opened up," Meera said. She looked earnestly into Martha's eyes. "You have to understand. Most people can't or won't let that happen. If things go wrong, there's too much to lose."

As Martha tried to absorb this, Meera added, "It may not show on the outside, Martha, but Bruce has made some enormous changes so he could be with you."

Slowly, Martha said, "And when I went to save Lian…."

"He thought he'd lost everything," Meera said. "We were miles away, but I could feel his heart just falling away. And it was a lot worse than before," she added. "Because what you've had together since Parallax has been so much more."

"And now those spaces you're talking about," Martha said. "He's shut them down again."

"That would be the most natural reaction," Meera said. "They haven't been open for very long."

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Both women turned toward the door as Gren walked into the control room.

"Am I early?" he asked, looking from Meera to Martha. "I came to take you home," he said to the telepath.

Meera smiled at him. "I'll be right there." She reached for Martha's hand. "I'm just guessing, but I don't think Bruce has let those spaces close up all the way."

"How do you know?" Martha asked miserably.

"Because you mean more to him than his fear and his pain," Meera said.

* * *

Lakeeta Reardon's voice seemed hesitant as she spoke over the secured line.

"So, this Robinson Petrone, what exactly did he do?" she asked.

Batman had pulled into the cave almost five minutes earlier, but he hadn't gotten out of the car. "Convenience store robbery."

"And he shot at someone?" Reardon asked.

"Didn't give him the chance," Batman said evenly.

"It's just that he's in the emergency room," Reardon said. "With a shattered cheekbone and a collapsed lung. So I was wondering if he resisted you or something. If someone from the press calls, I'd like to –"

"How many convenience store clerks have been killed by punks like him?" Batman interrupted.

"Well, you're right," Reardon said nervously. "Except in the last few days, we've had to book most of your arrests in the ER at Gotham General."

"I have to go, Commissioner," Batman said. He touched a spot on his left wrist and the phone cut off.

He stripped off the suit and took the elevator upstairs; he could take a shower in his own bedroom. Reardon was right, he thought, as the lift hummed to a stop. Over the last few days, his responses to the lawbreakers of Gotham had been excessive; he would tone it down.

As soon as Bruce walked through the door, he could see there was something odd about his bed; it was made flawlessly, as usual, but there was a bunch of stuff piled on top of it. His chest started to burn as he walked over to the mattress and sat down. He picked up the album Martha had put together to supplement the video she'd made him for Christmas, flipped through a few pages, then set it back down. Flopping onto his back, he lifted the heavy double picture frame she had carved out of a meteor the previous year, not long after they had started to become close.

He tried to decide whether Alfred's latest attempt to get him to reconcile with Martha was more or less subtle than the heart attack the old man had faked the previous day. It had been a pretty good act: Bruce had experienced a few long seconds of fear before he'd caught on to the old man.

He knew he was disappointing nearly everyone who cared about him, Alfred most of all. And that was nothing compared to what he was doing to Martha. She loved him beyond any sort of reason – something Bruce would never understand – and he was torturing her with his silence.

But he couldn't help himself. If he went anywhere near her, he would lose it, Bruce thought as he stepped into the shower and fiery needles of water burned into his flesh.

_H__aving met Martha – _Pat's gentle voice worked its way into Bruce's head – _I am confident that whatever it is that you're afraid of losing, she would help you find it._

But who would help him find it when Martha finally got herself killed?

Bruce stepped out of the shower, his skin nearly crimson from the scalding water, and pulled on a pair of boxers and jeans. He knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep.

Things had been going so – more than just well. It had been amazing, beyond what he could have ever hoped for. He had started to believe that he could do this – have a relationship with someone like Martha without screwing up. And then, like the asteroid Midori had blown into pebbles, it had all exploded.

Bruce was no hungrier than he was tired, but the sight of his empty bed made him queasy. He was halfway down the steps before he heard the doorbell ring. By the way the caller was leaning on the buzzer, Bruce guessed he had been ringing for a while.

Alfred had just reached the door as Bruce descended the last step. The elderly butler opened the door and a barefoot Roy Harper, wearing stolen hospital scrubs and a dogged expression, charged into the foyer.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked Bruce without preamble. As Alfred looked in astonishment from their visitor to a departing taxi, Roy pressed his right hand against his left side and asked, "Would you have rather Martha had left my daughter to die?"

"No," Bruce said. The question left him feeling terribly ashamed.

"The things about Martha that made her go after Lian are the things you love most about her," Roy panted. He leaned slightly to the right to take the pressure off of his broken ribs, but it didn't seem to give him much relief.

"I'm taking you back to the hospital," Bruce said.

"How can you throw away everything you two have together?" Roy asked.

"You did it," Bruce said. "With Midori."

"Do you want to be like me?" Roy asked incredulously. "Am I your role model for relationships?

"Midori wanted something I couldn't give her," he added. "All Martha wants is you."

Bruce raked a hand through his drying hair. "I'll go put a shirt on." He started back up the staircase.

"She wasn't being reckless this time," Roy called after him. "She was just being Martha."

Bruce wasn't sure how Roy had survived the cab ride. He needed to lie in the back seat of one of Bruce's larger sedans for the return trip to the hospital. Bruce said almost nothing as his friend continued to badger him to come to his senses.

"It's not like she won't find someone else," Roy warned. "Hell, Gren's been waiting in the wings since before Parallax. Your stupidity might be his good fortune."

Bruce's foot lurched into the brake pedal. "_What_?"

"Oh, come on," Roy said testily. "You remember what an obnoxious bastard Gren used to be. When did he start growing up? Right after Martha rejoined the League. And who has dinner at the Kents' every Sunday?"

Blindsided by a wave of possessive jealously, Bruce managed, "Because he worships Clark."

"Get real," Roy told him, as the cars behind them started honking. "Clark's not the only Kent he worships."

Bruce parked at the entrance to the emergency room and half-carried Roy back to his room. As furious nurses scurried around their missing patient, scolding and pampering him at the same time, Roy offered Bruce a last piece of advice.

"Don't leave her hanging," he said. "Give her some closure. If you're going to break it off, do it now."

It was the best advice Harper had given him, Bruce reflected later, after spending hours trying not to obsess over every moment he had seen Gren talking to Martha. Punishing her this way was unforgivable. He was simply too damaged to keep her happy. God knows Clark would be glad to see his daughter with their much younger teammate.

Martha had monitor duty until midnight. He would patrol until then – trying his best not to put anyone else in the hospital – and then go home to change and to… tell her. Bruce had never looked forward to anything less in his life, but for the pure joy Martha had given him, he at least owed her this.

Sleep continued to elude him and the manor felt lonelier than it ever had. He put on the fighting suit early and sought the distraction of battle. If he had listened to the weather forecast, as he usually did, he would have known it was expected to be the coldest night of a malicious winter. The streets of Gotham were barren. Ruthless wind sent trash scattering across filth-strewn parks and streets. Crime Alley was blown clean of the unremitting smell of urine and hopelessness.

He found himself there, standing on the broken cobblestones where his parents had fallen nearly half a century earlier. Thomas and Martha Wayne were buried in a well-tended double grave at an exclusive East Gotham cemetery, but when their son needed to visit them, he usually came here.

Martha had come with him on the anniversary of their death; she had reached for Bruce's hand after he had laid down the twin roses. She could feel his parents' presence, she had said. They were proud of him.

His parents would not be proud of him tonight, Batman thought, as his eyes moved along the lose grout, searching for blood that had been long washed away. He was throwing away the one thing they had cherished above all else: Love. Even as a child, Bruce had known what his mom and dad had was special. He had been to enough of his playmates' houses to see that not all of their parents hugged each other as often or as freely. After ten years of marriage, Thomas and Martha Wayne still held hands when they walked with their son along the lush grounds of their estate.

The only relationship Bruce had ever seen close to theirs was the one he had spent so many years resenting. He had told himself that Clark had been cheating the world when he and Lois started their family. He knew better now: It was Bruce who had felt cheated. Martha had once accused him of wanting everything her father had. She had been right. But he had stopped begrudging Clark his contentment when his daughter became the source of Bruce's own happiness.

He heard the scratch of heel against gravel and looked up sharply. A slight figure stood by a lamppost near the edge of the alley. It was a woman – elderly, from what Batman could tell from her posture – arms wrapped around a cloth coat that was flapping in the wind.

Approaching her cautiously, so as not to frighten her, he said, "Excuse me."

The woman turned toward him and beamed. Batman wasn't surprised. There was a breed of older Gothamite – most of them from the Narrows – who had never seemed intimidated by him.

"Are you the Batman?" she asked in a delighted voice. She was tiny, an African American woman with a broad, withered face and brown eyes as dark and warm as Martha's. She looked to be about eighty, maybe older. Besides the thin cloth coat, she wore a hand-crocheted pink cap, a matching scarf and black stretch gloves. It might have been enough for an ordinary winter day, but she was underdressed for this frigid night and she was shivering.

"This isn't a safe place to be," he told her. "Not ever. But especially not in the middle of the night."

"Oh, I got nothin' nobody would want," she told him. "And I won't be out here long. I was just talking to my husband."

Batman didn't have to look around to realize there was no one standing with them in the alley. "You're husband's here?" he asked neutrally.

"Oh, no," she said tolerantly. "I'm not crazy, young man. My husband's dead."

Ice crept along the surface of Batman's skin. "He was murdered here."

The woman gave him a scandalized look. "_No_. It was the diabetes that took him. First his legs, then his eyes. But he kept hangin' on to life and I kept hangin' on to him.

"Sixty-five years ago, he proposed to me, right here by this lamppost," the old woman explained. "Oh, he'd be angry if he knew I'd come back alone, but when he was alive, we always stopped by on the night of our anniversary, and I just knew he'd be here, tonight."

"Is he?" Batman asked.

"In spirit, son," the old woman replied. "Like I said, I'm not crazy."

He called her a cab – she was amazed that he could do this by talking into his wrist – and waited with her until it came, listening as she talked about her husband's last days.

It had taken him two years to die. He had lost both his legs to gangrene. Then his eyes went, followed shortly thereafter by his mind.

"It must have been hard on you," Batman said. "After all those years of marriage, having it end like that."

She looked astounded. "That's what marriage _is_. The good times build you up so you can get through the bad times. My husband gave me sixty-four glorious years and those last months, they were the most important."

He didn't understand, and she could see that, even through his mask. "I never knew when I came in to see him each day, if he'd still be alive," she explained. "But God blessed me. He fixed it so I was there, holding my Gregory's hand, when he went to get the next life all set up for the both of us."

A cab glided up to them. Batman reached for the compartment in his belt where he kept some money, but the old woman smacked his gloved hand.

"Don't you dare," she scolded him. "Your wife," she added. "I'll bet she's plenty proud of you."

He shook his head. "I don't –"

The cabbie jumped out of his car and helped the elderly woman into the back of the cab. She gave Batman a quick wave, then disappeared behind the heavy yellow door. He thanked the goggling driver for seeing to it that the woman got home safely, slipped him the fare – plus a sizeable tip – and asked him to tell her that rides were free that night to ladies celebrating their anniversaries. As he watched the cab pull away, an old clock struck midnight and Batman went home so that Bruce Wayne could keep his appointment.

* * *

It was as slow a night at the Watchtower as it was in Gotham. This was fortunate, as Martha's attention rested mostly on her own thoughts rather than the monitor.

As she flew home – Wally had badgered her into taking the shuttle into the stratosphere before he piloted it remotely back to the station – she thought about Meera's diagnosis of Bruce and wondered if it was a death sentence for their relationship. It all came down to whether or not his love for her was stronger than his fear. From what Martha had seen, fear was winning.

As she twisted her key in the doorknob lock, she saw light coming out from the living room. Martha wondered if Lian was up. She'd been conking out early since she'd come home from the hospital.

But it wasn't Lian who'd left on the light. Bruce was sitting in her living room, head down, his hand gripping the arm of her battered couch. He looked up when Martha walked through the door.

A sickening dread surged through her. "I take it you've come to tell me in person?"

"Yeah," he said softly. He rose slowly from the chair without taking his eyes off Martha.

_Don't cry_, she thought, bracing herself. _Don't –_

"I'm sorry," Bruce said.

She waited for him to finish, but as he looked at her expectantly and she saw the hope in his eyes, she realized that he already had. He wasn't sorry because it was over. He was just sorry.

The tears that had refused to come before rained down Martha's cheeks. "Don't you do this to me again," she whispered.

"I won't," Bruce said fervently. He crossed the room and cupped her face, wiping her tears away with his thumbs as he pressed his forehead against hers.

"I'm sorry, Martha," he said again, and angled his head so that his lips were brushing hers. He drew away, just millimeters, and then pressed another light kiss on her mouth. When he kissed her a third time, Martha wrapped her arms around his neck and her mouth opened beneath his and she was pretty sure that not all of the tears were hers.

* * *

"We've never made love in my bed before," Martha murmured against Bruce's cheek. She was still trembling from the intensity of their lovemaking: always powerful, but made even more so this night by the rawness of their emotions and the pleasure of moving their bodies together after days of missing each other's touch.

"Your bed's too small," Bruce said, squirming to free a stuffed superhero figure that was trapped beneath his shoulder. He picked up the Superman doll. "And your father keeps staring at me."

Martha laughed as Bruce continued to fish among her dolls. "Where's the Green Lantern?"

She ran lazy fingers through his soft hair. "Gren stole it." _When he thought I was dead_, she added to herself, not wishing to go there with Bruce at the moment.

Bruce asked sullenly, "Why didn't you tell me Gardner was in love with you?"

Martha raised her head and gave him a quizzical look. "I've think you're a little off on that. He's in love with my father."

Bruce shook his head.

"OK," Martha admitted. "He likes me. I didn't say anything because I didn't want it to get all weird up in the Watchtower. You'll notice," she added, as Bruce's face started to cloud, "That I did _not _replace that doll. I have two Batmans, though."

Picking one of them up in each hand, he mused, "Kinky."

Martha giggled and stroked his hair again. Then she looked at him with solemn eyes.

"I will do everything I can," she said. "To be careful. But –"

Bruce interrupted. "But our lives involve a lot of risk. You don't have to change anything, Martha. Not even your name. I'm sorry I didn't think you could live up to it," he added. "You do every day."

An enigmatic look flickered across Martha's face, but then she smiled and leaned over to kiss him. As she drew back, there was a timid knock on the door.

"Martha? You're in there?"

Martha grinned naughtily at Bruce. "Yes, Lian."

Hesitantly, her roommate asked, "Is Bruce in there?"

"Yes, Lian," Martha replied, recalling a little sheepishly that she had used Bruce's name rather loudly during the last half-hour.

"_Yay_!" Lian squealed. They heard her practically bounding back to her own bedroom.

"Now do you see why I had to save her?" Martha asked Bruce.

"I don't see why she doesn't hate me," he confessed.

"Because I love you," Martha said. She slanted her head at him. "When were you first attracted to me?"

Bruce dropped his head back onto the pillow. "You'll kick me out of this bed. And we just made up."

Undaunted, Martha said, "Meera thinks it was when I moved to Gotham and re-joined the League."

Bruce was quiet for nearly a minute. Then he said resignedly, "As an ancient English yenta once pointed out to me, my attraction to you predates your arrival in Gotham City."

"_When_?" Martha asked, utterly intrigued. "Not… when I had that big crush on you when I was fourteen?"

"_No_," said Bruce quickly. "God, no. That was horrible."

He added, "This is almost as bad."

"You don't have to tell me," she said, seeing that he was truly embarrassed.

Bruce pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned back against the headboard. Martha nestled against his lap, assuming the conversation was over. But he said, "I think you were about twenty.

"You said you didn't remember," he continued. "It was after your fiancé… I had come up to Metropolis to pay my respects…."

"When Dave died?" Martha asked. She pulled herself up next to him, even more fascinated now.

Bruce mumbled. "You came into your parents' living room with Lian…. You were in pretty bad shape. I think she had taken you jogging – some kind of exercise therapy.

"Lian must have picked out your clothes that day," he added. "Because you were wearing practically nothing. A tiny pair of shorts. One of those shrunken little blouses. No bra.

"You looked so vulnerable," he said. "You thanked me for coming and your eyes were so glassy I wasn't sure you could see me. And you were, um, in that outfit and Clark was gazing at me all gratefully, also thanking me, and I looked at you and I knew I had to get out of there."

"Were you looking at my vulnerable, glassy eyes?" Martha teased. "Or that part of me that was braless?"

"Both," he admitted, sounding relieved that she wasn't disgusted with him.

"You are _such _a man," Martha told him. "Is that when you started being mean to me?"

"We didn't see each other for a couple of years," Bruce reminded her. "And I repressed the whole episode before I made it off the elevator. But I guess that was why I reacted the way I did when you got out of that beat-up old VW and went after Harvey."

Martha straddled his lap and asked seriously, "What made you come back to me tonight?"

He told her about Alfred's bogus heart attack and her presents piled on his bed and Roy's touching hospital escape. And then he told her about the old woman in Crime Alley.

"I know it was hard on you," Bruce said. "And I'm way beyond sorry. But I think I had to go through this, so we could move forward."

"I learned a few things myself," Martha said. She ran a hand along his cheek. "But I hope you don't have to go through anything else."

"Well, there's one more thing," Bruce told her.

On her wary look, he added, "Let's drive up to Metropolis right now and talk to your parents. I want to get that over with."

Martha pressed a relieved kiss on his mouth. "You wake up my mother at three in the morning and the trauma of these past few days is going to seem like nothing."

"Then let's go home," Bruce said. "And let Alfred know everything is OK."

"Home?" Martha asked him.

He nodded and they both let it sink in. "You can take the Batman dolls," he said, looking around her bed. "And I guess you'd better bring the Superman. All of them," he added, as she started to smile. "But if that Lantern doll ever makes its way back to you, it better stay out of our bed."

Martha kissed him. "You're the only superhero I need in my bed."

"I'm not a superhero," Bruce said.

"I wasn't talking about Batman," Martha told him. "And the hell you're not."

_

* * *

_

Just a little more time and he would be ready. A little more time and the world would be his. A little more time and, resurrected, he would crush their puny bodies, their feeble minds, their wretched little souls.

_The time had come for the Justice League to start saying their goodbyes. It was a pity they didn't know it._

**

* * *

****Next Chapter:** _Lois Lane gets her interview and Harvey comes to a crossroads._

* * *


	16. Chapter 16

Brilliantly beta-read by arg914

* * *

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BATMAN!

* * *

Harvey's eyes opened into blackness and for a frantic second he believed he was still trapped in his nightmare. It was never fully dark in his cell, nor in any other at Arkham; the asylum's twenty-four hour surveillance cameras required some light. Yet he was somehow blind, as if an intangible hand had wrapped itself around his eyes and he was smothering in deep, shadowless darkness and there were screams….

"…_.so he put her in a pumpkin shell!_"

"Shut the fuck up!" Harvey recognized the rattled voice of a guard.

"… _and there he kept her very well!_"

Heavy footsteps crashed past his cell and there was more shouting. As a wave of goose bumps welled up across his flesh, Harvey felt his way to his door.

"What's happening?" he shouted through the tiny window. "What's –"

He jerked back as the emergency lights stuttered on in a series of erratic blinks. Panting, Harvey closed one eye and leaned his head against the door.

"What happened?" he muttered. His breath gradually slowed as the noises outside his cell suggested restored calm, but he remained by the door, not wishing to return to his bed.

It took him a moment to understand that the blackout had not been part of his nightmare; that it had in fact, liberated him from it. He had… he had been hurting people… people in… Harvey shook his head hard. People in tight, colorful clothing: costumes. He had been hurting them. It had felt… good.

He ran trembling fingers over his face and was reassured to find no changes in the relief map of scars marring the right side of his face. In his dream they had been moving.

"You all right, Dent?" Harvey jumped as a guard rapped a flashlight against the cell door.

"I'm all right," he said. "What happened?"

"Good question," the guard replied grimly. "Let me know when you find out, will you?"

* * *

Halfway through her nightly patrol with Batman, Superwoman had gotten a message from Alfred that Martha Kent was needed at Arkham. The asylum had been momentarily plunged into darkness and the on-duty psychiatrist had decided that Sean Fray was the most likely culprit. Martha was officially the technopath's doctor, though he in fact received no therapy. As the sole resident of the institution's ultra-secure third floor, he was considered too dangerous to treat. Fray was permanently bound with inhibitor devices designed to neutralize his powers. He was fed through a robotic wall system, monitored continuously and would spend the rest of his life with weapons trained surreptitiously at his head. Martha wasn't allowed in his cell, which deterred her not at all from going in there, periodically, to check the integrity of his inhibitor collar and cuffs. She loathed no one in the world as much as Fray; he had orchestrated a bloodbath that left her short several friends and he had nearly murdered Batman.

The technopath was unlikely to be the source of any trouble at Arkham: Martha also scheduled his drugs. The cocktail she had prescribed ruled out the possibility of Fray experiencing the kind of lucidity he would need to use his powers, even in the near-impossible event that the inhibitors had failed. But when unsettling events involving any sort of technology were involved, it was her obligation to check up on him. She did this gladly, though in this case, as in previous ones, Fray was not to blame.

She stopped by Harvey's cell before leaving the asylum. The blackout had shaken him – more so than she might have expected. He had deep circles under his eyes. Martha suspected he was trying to keep himself awake in order to avoid a series of increasingly unnerving nightmares.

She made her way back to Batman for a final hour of patrol, then hungrily had her way with Bruce against the slippery shower wall before steering him upstairs to topple into the cool sheets of their king-sized bed. Encounters with Fray tended to have this effect on Martha; they made her thankful her lover was alive and whole.

Bruce mumbled something about her celebration of his survival nearly killing him, although he did not appear to be complaining. Lacking the strength to shift over to his side of the bed, he fell asleep slumped on top of her before he could say goodnight. Martha traced a pensive finger along the spiral scar that wound around his right leg, wriggled them both into a spoon position and drifted off.

Her cell phone woke them both two hours later, minutes before she had programmed her alarm to ring. She reached across the nightstand to pick up the phone, then settled back against Bruce, who dropped his hand drowsily from Martha's shoulder to her breast.

"Oh, hi, Mom," Martha said sleepily into the phone.

Bruce removed his hand. Suppressing a chuckle, Martha asked, "What's going on?"

"I'll be in Gotham City today," Lois said. "Are you available for lunch?"

"Sure," Martha said, a little surprised at the unusually short notice.

"Is Bruce?" Lois asked.

"Um. I don't know," Martha faltered. "I could call him."

"Why don't you just roll over and ask him, Martha?" Lois said impatiently.

Martha pressed the mute button and repeated the conversation to Bruce, who nodded with a combination of trepidation and a vague sort of relief. She put the phone on speaker and asked her mother if she wouldn't rather meet them for dinner.

"If we have lunch, it has to be at Arkham," Martha explained.

"Oh, I think a madhouse is the perfect place for this conversation," Lois said coolly.

Martha and Bruce exchanged a pained glance as she added, "I'll pick something up from Qdoba for the three of us."

Bruce shook his head and pointed to himself.

"Bruce says he'll bring lunch," Martha told her mother. "Is noon OK?"

Lois agreed to meet her at the guard station in the lobby at 12 PM. Martha hung up and turned to Bruce, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing a bristly cheek.

He gave her a worried look. "I should probably have Alfred lace the food with tranquilizers."

Martha laughed. "I think you can take my mother."

"I'm not so sure," he said. Martha rose to her knees on the bed and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

"When she sees how good you are to me…," she murmured.

Bruce reached back to touch her hair. "Your mother has plenty of reasons not to like me," he said. "I have a lot of damage to undo."

"I know it's hard for you to put yourself out there," Martha said. "But I think if you're as open as you can be about how you feel about me… and how sorry you are about the attitude you used to have toward my dad … we can win her over."

He tilted his head back until their eyes met. "What did Harvey call you?"

"A relentless Pollyanna," Martha said. She slid her hand down past his hard stomach in a markedly un-Pollyannaish way. Bruce groaned and grabbed her wrist, twisting around to pin her against the mattress.

"I'm not having sex with you," he informed her. Several wayward body parts told another story. "What would your mother think?"

Martha moaned as his lips found her throat and he nudged her legs apart with a knee. She dragged her fingers down the length of his scarred, sculpted back and babbled an incoherent response.

"What was that?" Bruce whispered against her ear.

"… lucky...," managed Martha, as his determined movements sent cascades of pleasure rolling through her body.

"She doesn't think you're lucky," Bruce told her. His breath began to quicken. "But I know I am."

* * *

As far as Adrienne was concerned, he was off the clock until 9 AM. He had paid his dues for more than twenty years, working early hours, as his staff did now, and staying on call long into the night. He didn't have to do that anymore; he was in charge. If he came in early, those extra minutes belonged to him. He resented sharing them with anybody. It did not help that the person most likely to infringe upon this precious time was his most problematic fellow.

This was the trouble when a member of your staff did not fear you, Adrienne thought bleakly as Martha Kent tapped gingerly on the frame of his open office door. They felt entitled to barge in on you whenever they had a problem, rather than attempting to work things out for themselves.

"Sorry to bother you." This was Kent's standard greeting; Adrienne doubted she was even marginally sorry. "I was just wondering if you'd heard back from the board."

Tonelessly, the director replied, "I'll tell you as soon as I hear from them." This was his own rote reply, one that wouldn't be changing anytime soon. Adrienne had personally mailed to the board of governors Kent's request to stay on as Two-Face's psychiatrist. Rather than sending her petition through the institution's inter-office system, he had dropped it into a U.S. Postal Service mailbox – well, he had been closer to one, is all. Of course, it might have expedited things if he'd put stamps on the envelope, or an address, but he was a busy man and these were small details.

He found Kent's fascination with the murderous old lunatic revolting. Between Two-Face, the vapid much-older boyfriend and the pajama-clad crimefighters, Adrienne didn't know when she found the time for normal people. She was just an oddball and he'd be happily rid of her when her fellowship ended in a little more than five months.

"OK," she said, doing a poor job of masking her disappointment. "Sorry to bother you," she added as she started to move away from the door.

Following an irresistible impulse to draw blood, Adrienne commented. "Still want to do it? After that –" 'screw-up' was probably too risky a term "– miscalculation a couple of weeks ago about Dent's cellblock preferences?"

The phony look of remorse on her face disgusted him. "I owe it to him even more – to stay around and keep working with him," she said. "I really messed up."

"You don't owe him anything," Adrienne said flatly. "He's a murderer."

He watched with satisfaction as she struggled to contain her resentment. "I've got a patient."

He nodded and she disappeared, off to save some other wholly irredeemable soul. Adrienne turned back to his desk and saw that it was five minutes after nine.

Damn it. He was going to sit and enjoy his coffee anyway. He dropped into his leather chair. Five months, he told himself again. Five months until he could say goodbye to Wayne's little girlfriend. Then he'd turn his attention to Two-Face. He was going to take a good look at the old psychopath's drug schedule as soon as his irksome doctor had moved on. Enough of this crap about the patient having a hand in his own treatment. As far as Adrienne was concerned, Dent was far too lucid for his own good. There were plenty of anti-psychotic cocktails that could take care of that once Martha Kent was gone.

* * *

Martha had spent the two hours prior to her conversation with Adrienne hurriedly trying to get through her morning paperwork. Ordinarily, she caught up on a lot of it during lunchtime, while absently gnawing on a sandwich. She doubted she'd be doing much eating during Lois' visit no matter what sort of delicacy Alfred had whipped up.

She progressively whittled down the sheaf of state-mandated forms. Completing them took little brainpower, leaving Martha to engage compulsively in a series of imaginary clashes with Lois that were unlikely to come close to the intensity of the real thing. The only interruption came early on, in the form of a call from a frazzled Lian.

Lois had not been on her way to Gotham when she called Martha; she was already there, sitting on the bed her daughter had abandoned several days earlier. Lian had been unable to stop her from going through the bedroom closet and enough drawers to realize that Martha wasn't living there anymore.

"She was _pissed_," Lian told her. "And… I think she was hurt, too."

Martha found herself swimming in guilt as she listened to Lian describe the hour-long interrogation that followed. She had hurt her mother, a woman who had always loved her with a ferocious devotion despite their many differences. Even during her teen-aged years, when most of her friends had hated their parents, Martha had always been able to go to Lois. Her directness, off-putting to so many, had always been a comfort to her daughter. She could always depend on Lois to tell her the truth. But Martha had not been honest with her mother for a while.

She vowed to do whatever it took to repair the rift her silence had caused, but she did not lose sight of the fact that a wounded Lois was a dangerous Lois. Martha knew Bruce would bear the bulk of her mother's hostility. Lois had resented what had for a long time been his dismissive attitude toward her husband. She had once suspected Bruce of having seduced her daughter not out of any real feelings for Martha, but rather to express an ongoing contempt for Clark. Martha wasn't sure what Lois believed now.

She would find out soon enough. A guard called at ten minutes before noon to tell her that her mother was at the front desk. Feeling close to throwing up, Martha wobbled down the stairs to retrieve her. She saw right away that Lois was dressed for battle: Immaculate in a trim gray suit, hair and nails perfect, a deadpan expression to rival Batman's. Martha greeted her mother with a shaking voice and led her into the elevator.

Her attempt at composure lasted until the twin doors met and they were alone. As Martha turned away from the elevator buttons, she caught a flicker of uncertainty in her mother's face that Lois had not meant for her to see. The steely countenance that replaced it came up too late. How daunting must it be, Martha wondered, to prepare for battle over your daughter with the man who was Batman?

"Mom," she said plaintively and as their eyes met, Martha launched herself into Lois' arms. "I'm sorry, Mom. This isn't how –"

The elevator doors lumbered open; a cluster of doctors stood nearby, sycophantically orbiting Adrienne. Martha released Lois and motioned her past her colleagues. She hoped Adrienne wouldn't stop them. Lois would not mince words with the director and Martha was keen on surviving the final months of her fellowship.

As soon as she closed the heavy wooden door behind them, she turned back to her mother to continue her apology, but Lois was already lifting a framed picture of Bruce from Martha's desk that had been taken during their trip to Tanquere Island. He'd just pulled off a bicycle helmet and his sweaty hair was plastered against his forehead. It was the only photo Bruce had let her take. He turned it on its face whenever he visited her office, but Martha agreed with a female colleague who had seen it recently and pronounced Bruce "hot."

"I love him, Mom," Martha said, feeling stupidly overdramatic and girlish.

Lois put down the photo. "I know you do," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm here to see how much he loves you."

Somehow this seemed almost as ominous as the more heated reaction – "_Are you crazy_?" – that Martha had expected in response to her declaration. She wondered how her mother planned to quantify the depth of Bruce's love.

Lois had just aimed a pointed look at her watch – it was a few minutes after twelve – when there was a rap at the door and Bruce let himself in.

His face was undergoing a kind of wrestling match between the safety of Batman's deadpan mask, the public Bruce Wayne's bland façade and a true display of the kind of emotion Martha believed was necessary for Lois to see. He settled on an odd blend of the three, which left him looking like he'd been whacked on the side of his head with something heavy.

"Hi," he said. Hampered somewhat by a huge picnic basket in one hand and two insulated catering bags in the other, he made his way quickly to Lois and gave her a nervous kiss on the cheek. Martha was already relieving him of the bags when Bruce turned to her with a paralyzed look, wondering if he should kiss her in front of her glowering mother.

She saved him by standing on her toes to brush his jaw, then remarking that it looked like he'd brought enough food for the entire asylum.

"Alfred kind of went overboard," Bruce said. Braving a look at Lois, he added, "He sends his regards."

Lois gave him a withering glance and folded her arms across her chest. "So how's your sex life?" she asked, apparently neither in the mood to waste time nor take prisoners. Martha moved instinctively to defend her lover.

"It's incredible, Mom," she snapped. "How's yours?"

Lois stepped forward until she and her daughter were nearly nose-to-nose. "I'm married to Superman, sweetheart," she said coolly. "My sex life is always going to be better than yours."

"Stop," Bruce said woodenly. He looked desperately at Martha, who had opened her mouth to retort. "Can we just give her that? Please?"

"You look a little seasick, Bruce." said Lois, not bothering to hide her satisfaction.

"Just..." He passed a hand across his face and swallowed. "Please stop fighting."

Both women looked at him in surprise.

"We're not fighting," Martha said.

"You haven't _seen _fighting," Lois added.

"And he's not going to," Martha warned her mother. She pulled out a chair for Bruce, gave Lois a defiant look and sat beside him, dropping her warm hand over his clammy one. He looked a little startled, as if he was unsure any sort of touching was allowed in Lois' presence, but she merely shot her daughter an unfazed look and reached for one of Alfred's sandwiches.

"This is very good," she remarked, seemingly unaware that she was the only one in the room with an appetite. "So exactly what are your intentions toward my daughter?"

"Hello, Mom," Martha said pointedly. "How have you been?"

"I don't have time for pleasantries, Martha," Lois said quietly. "I need to get back to Metropolis before dinnertime. Your father doesn't know I'm here."

A silence, sober and thick, settled over the room as they absorbed this news. Then Bruce leaned forward in his chair.

"I'm in love with her," he said. "With Martha. I..." He looked uncertainly at Martha, who beamed her encouragement.

Lois wasn't impressed. "Prove it."

"Tell me how," Bruce said. "Tell me what would satisfy you and I'll do it."

"Fine," Lois said tartly, "Why don't you start by explaining how persuading her to keep your relationship a secret from her family –"

"There haven't been any secrets," Martha interrupted. "Bruce has invited you and Dad to dinner three times to talk about this."

Knocked a bit off course, by this news, Lois sat back in her chair and said grimly, "I don't remember being asked to dinner." She looked at Bruce, who was staring at the floor.

"He asked Daddy," Martha said. "Who told him every time that you were busy."

As Lois mentally organized the beginnings of a stern conversation with her husband. Bruce said, "Look. I don't want to get Clark…. This has got to be really difficult for him…."

"You're defending Clark," Lois said. "Which I admit is a switch. Let me explain something," she added. "Brooding silence may be a norm for you, but my family talks to each other. It's how we stay close. And since this whole thing has started between you and my daughter, she hasn't told us a thing and Clark can't talk to anyone about it. Not even me."

Her voice wavered over this last admission. Bruce looked at her, all remnants of his mask gone.

"I'm sorry, Lois," he said. "The last I ever wanted was to damage Martha's relationship with her family. Or yours and Clark's."

"He almost didn't get involved with me because of it," Martha added.

"Then why didn't you tell _me_?" Lois asked Martha. "Why ask Clark three times and not –"

Bruce answered, "All the years Clark and I have spent working together on that little project" – It was an interesting euphemism for thirty-plus years of saving the world, Martha thought – "And the way I've treated him for a lot of it…. I didn't want him to think we were going behind his back."

"How very feudal of you," said Lois, readjusting her armor as quickly as her composure. She turned back to her daughter. "What happened three days ago to make you so miserable? I haven't heard your voice like that since –"

"That was me," Bruce said. "Being extremely stupid."

He gave her an abbreviated version of what had happened, without actually explaining the event that had triggered it. Lois gave him a funny look and then turned to her daughter.

"Now he's covering for you," she told Martha. "What the hell did you do?"

Martha described her rescue of Lian. Lois went only a little pale before saying imperiously to Bruce, "And now you're sure you can accept the way my daughter operates? Without reservation?"

"Yes," Bruce said firmly.

"You trust her to live up to her heritage?" Lois asked. "And her name?"

Before Bruce could respond, Martha said, "I'm going to change my name, Mom."

Both of them stared at her, Lois too startled by her daughter's announcement to see the surprise flash quickly across Bruce's face.

"Why?" Lois challenged.

"Because I'm not Superman with boobs," Martha replied.

Rather than point out that with Quiver in the Justice League, no one was really thinking about Martha's boobs, Lois lifted an inquiring eyebrow at her daughter, who merely said, "I'm not ready for the big reveal."

Bruce's hand moved closer to hers where the arms of their chairs were touching. It was a gesture Lois was not meant to see, but she had not become a great reporter from being unobservant.

"I know opposites are supposed to attract," she said. "But I don't get you two at all. I've never known two more different people."

She listened with jaded indulgence to her daughter's passionate account of how wonderfully Bruce treated her, how good they were together and how much they actually had in common. Unused to such exuberant praise in the presence of others, let alone Martha's unsympathetic mother, Bruce stared at his shoes.

"I want to spend the rest of my life with him," Martha finished ardently. Lois cocked her head at her daughter for several long seconds and then turned to Bruce.

"Just so I don't come off sounding like a bitch," Lois told him, "You straighten her out on that one."

Martha looked at him with expectant curiosity. Gently, Bruce said, "The best we can hope for is that I spend the rest of my life with you. Not the other way around."

Impatiently, Martha said, "I know he's older than me."

"It's a big deal Martha," Lois said, looking meaningfully at her daughter. "I know more than anyone." Her husband was two years older than her, and now also about thirty years younger.

"We've talked about it," Martha said quietly. Her mother turned to Bruce.

"She wants to spend the rest of your life with you," she said. "What's that mean to you? Marriage, children?"

"Yes," Bruce said, without hesitation.

Lois sat back, blinked and issued a final challenge. "We've said a lot here," she said. "But it's just been talk. I'm still not convinced."

"That I love Martha?" Bruce asked. Lois gave a short nod.

Martha started, "I don't know how you can –" But Bruce touched her hand, cutting her off.

He gave her a hesitant look and she could tell he was debating with himself. Then he drew in a quick breath and said tentatively, "I didn't tell you about this because I knew how you would react."

Moving past her puzzled expression to look at Lois, he said, "When I got off the plane from Tibet last summer, I went to my lawyer." He tapped nervously on a knee as both women now watched him. "I, ah, I changed my will. I'm leaving Martha – well, almost everything."

With precisely the horror he expected, Martha protested, "I don't want your money. I want –"

"Be quiet, Martha," Lois said. She was staring at Bruce as though she'd never seen him before. "This has nothing to do with money, does it?"

Bruce shook his head. "I just wanted to make sure you were taken care of," he told Martha, who swiped at her eyes and stared at him in disbelief.

"I'm um," Lois cleared her throat, then reached for her purse and got to her feet. "I'm going to tell Clark that I think you two are..." She shook her head, a bit stunned. "That I'm OK with this and that he needs to give it a chance."

As Martha leapt up to hug her, Lois looked directly at Bruce and added, "The next time you marry my daughter, you might want to let her know about it."

It was a really weird interpretation, Martha decided, of a gesture she did not fully understand, made before she and Bruce were even together. Considering how well this dreaded conversation had ended, she decided not to argue.

"I love you, Mom," she said as her mother pressed a kiss against her temple.

"Drive me to the airport?" Lois asked Bruce, who was getting shakily to his feet. "I'm sure Martha has to get back to work."

The default deadpan expression he'd been holding back snapped immediately back into place. "Sure."

"Oh, come on," Lois said irritably to Martha, who could not conceal her apprehension at the idea of her lover being trapped in a car with her mother. "He can take care of himself."

Martha was sure he could, when it came to fighting supervillains. But in terms of pure scary, she thought, her mother, when she wanted to, could make the Joker look like a naughty toddler.

* * *

As soon as Bruce pulled the heavy wooden door closed behind them, Lois whirled around and smacked him across the chest.

"That make you feel better?" asked Bruce, who had anticipated the blow and made a calculated decision to allow it.

"I may have to do it a few more times," she advised him.

As they stepped out into the crisp mid-winter air, he took a few surreptitious deep breaths, then led Lois to the jag.

"Thanks," she said, as he held open the door. She stopped before getting in and gave him a frank, almost friendly look. "Freakiest conversation of your life?"

Bruce gave a short laugh. "Yeah," he said, relaxing a bit.

"How the hell did this whole thing get started?" Lois asked him, as they pulled out of the Arkham parking lot. "Clark said you spent the first year Martha was here fighting with each other. Or was that some sort of maladjusted Tracy-Hepburn thing?"

"I guess." Bruce gave her rundown on the history of his relationship with Martha, omitting the details a man might not want to share with his girlfriend's mother.

When he was finished, Lois asked, "You really want to marry her?"

Bruce fumbled for the right words. "I worry about how fair that would be to her. You're right about the age difference. She'll be a young woman for a long time. I don't want her trapped with an old man."

Lois said, "Pull over."

"What?" asked Bruce, looking over at her with concern.

"Pull the car over," she repeated, emphasizing each word. Fearing he had somehow offended her, he eased the jag onto the shoulder of I-95. The small vehicle shuddered as a tractor-trailer whizzed past it.

"A couple years ago, I got my eyes done," Lois said. She waited as his gaze moved across her face, searching for signs of surgery. "Not a bad job, was it?"

Bruce shook his head.

"Clark…." Lois's eyes grew distant. "It was the worst fight we ever had. He was furious… yelling about the dangers of anesthesia… that I risked my life out of some sort of vanity…."

She had not acted out of vanity, Bruce realized, but rather in fear. She had been afraid of losing the interest of a husband who didn't age. Time had etched away at a face that had once been smooth and young and while Lois remained one of the most beautiful women of any age Bruce had ever known, she did not look 29 anymore, or even 39.

"He didn't get it," he said. Bruce did now, understanding her actions in a more personal way than he could have ever imagined. He was going to go through the same thing with Martha, only faster.

"In an abstract sort of way, he did," Lois said. "But I think he was really hurt that I didn't think his love for me was strong enough to see past the superficial ravages of age."

"I don't know," Bruce said. "I think that's a pretty human fear."

Lois nodded. "People think the super-powers are what make Clark more than human. That's not true. It's his heart." She looked deeply into Bruce's eyes, allowing him a rare glimpse of a woman she usually hid behind a wall of bluster. "He will love me until I am old and wrinkled and have no idea who I am. He may not want to get it on with me at that point," she added with a hasty grin. "But he _will _love me. And I have to trust that.

"Martha's the same way," she said and Bruce realized the point of Lois' story wasn't that loving her daughter would lead to perpetual insecurity and eventual heartbreak. "She will love you when you are the miserable old bastard I am sure you're going to become."

For the second time since the awkward trip started, Bruce laughed. He looked gratefully at Lois, who acknowledged him with a slight smile, but then added seriously, "You need to let her make that call. It's not up to you to decide if you're right for her. It's your job decide if she's right for you – and leave the rest up to Martha."

Bruce would later marvel at the irony of the woman who had at first objected the most to his relationship with Martha being the one to remove this final reservation. But as he sat with Lois Lane on in a small car on the edge of the highway, he could only feel thankful.

"So you don't worry about it anymore?" he asked. "The age thing?"

With a bittersweet smile, Lois said. "I said my husband was more than human, not me. Of course I worry about it… sometimes."

Bruce offered her a cautious grin. "We can give each other pep talks," he said. "When we're sitting in the Old Superheroes Home and our baby-faced spouses are still out there fighting evil."

"That's a pretty exclusive rest home," Lois said. "You think they'll take me?"

Bruce leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. "I'm sure of it," he said. "Thanks, Lois."

"I'll turn on you in a heartbeat if you hurt my daughter," Lois warned.

"You and Alfred," Bruce said as he started up the car. "I wouldn't have a chance."

She didn't let him park and accompany her into the airport, claiming she needed some time to think about what she was going to say to Clark. Lois told Bruce not to expect an abrupt about-face from her husband. He had three decades of convoluted relationship to untangle. It was going to take some time.

As soon as she disappeared through the sliding glass doors, Bruce fished his cell phone out of his pocket and smiled. He had forgotten to switch his phone from 'vibrate' to 'ring' when he and Lois had left the asylum. Martha had called him twice. He spoke into the receiver and her number began to ring; he was disappointed when he reached her voice mail. She must be with a patient.

Bruce was about to leave her a message that everything was OK, when a fat snowflake plopped onto his windshield, distracting him. A dozen wet, white pinwheels of ice splattered against the glass and Bruce put the phone away, deciding he would go back to Arkham and tell Martha in person. He would wait around until she was finished for the day. Maybe it would still be snowing when he drove her home and they could take a walk around the estate, talking as they watched the brown grass turn white. They had a lot of things to talk about, Bruce thought. Good things.

* * *

While Bruce sat talking to Lois on the shoulder of I-95, a cell door in a maximum security wing at Arkham Asylum hissed open, seemingly of its own volition. The inmate who lived behind it, a shape-shifting meta-villain named Michael Hartrampf, pushed a thick finger at the door and watched in fascination as it slid into the opposing wall. He stuck his head through the opening and found himself staring at half a dozen fellow prisoners, each of whom had moved guardedly into the corridor before realizing he was not along.

The reality of their sudden freedom hit the inmates just as a rookie guard – one of Adrienne's newest recruits – stumbled into their midst on his way to the staff cafeteria. The newbie's hunger superseded the burgeoning sense of paranoia he had been cultivating in the hopes of surviving his stint at Arkham. His preoccupation with his lunch sent him crashing into the arms of a startled Hartrampf, whose narrowed eyes were the last the young guard would ever see.

The snap of his neck was a starting gun, triggering what would be the grisliest riot in Lawrence Adrienne's Arkham.

Whatever had caused the doors to unseal had also pre-empted an alarm system designed to alert security when these sorts of malfunctions occurred. Another guard was dead and two others had started firing at a ballooning throng of escaped inmates by the time it became clear that a full-scale uprising was under way. Every cell door in the asylum had somehow been opened. Within minutes, nearly all of them were empty.

Harvey had been sitting on the edge of his cot, trying to focus on a breathing exercise Martha had given him, when the incessant chant of nursery rhymes cut off in mid-shrill, replaced momentarily by an abrupt guttural sound and then silence. He tilted his head toward the door and noticed a blade of light coming in through the corner. Feeling almost as though he was sleepwalking, Harvey shuffled over to investigate and felt his breath catch as he saw the crack between the wall of his cell and his door. He watched his shaking hand as if it belonged to someone else, slipping two fingers through the opening and spreading them like a horizontal peace sign, widening the gap. Then the same hand moved up to caress his scarred face before reaching out to shove the door aside.

* * *

The alarm began to chime just as Martha was flipping her cell phone closed for a second time, wondering what her mother might have done to Bruce. Maybe there had been a lot of traffic, she thought as she heard the first ding. At Arkham, the signal for emergencies came not in a klaxon-like blare, but with a series of bells designed not to further agitate the prisoners. Martha set her phone on her desk and listened. Two more dings. Another riot, she thought, checking to make sure she had the key to her office. She wondered how many inmates had gotten lose this time. Staff psychiatrists were assigned stations for these emergencies; as Martha headed through the door to hers, the alert chimed twice more.

Five dings. She veered back toward her desk and grabbed the phone. Having twice attempted to call Bruce on his cell phone, she now dialed Wayne Manor.

"No chance of me coming home early today," Martha announced to Alfred in a cheerful voice. "There's a full-scale riot going on here. Mind telling Bruce I'll be a little late? I can't reach him on his cell phone."

"I'll pass on your regrets," Alfred promised.

Her next call was to the police. Staff was forbidden this contact; Adrienne insisted that all emergencies be reported to him; he would make the call if he deemed it necessary. Too many police reports were bad for his record. Nearly all of the riots under his watch had been reported late for this reason. Several doctors, including Martha, had vowed in a disgruntled lunch meeting to make the call themselves the next time there was an emergency.

She was the only one who followed through. No one had notified the police; the dispatcher promised to relay the message. Martha thanked her and for form's sake, hurried to her station, moving a little more quickly than an average woman could.

She wasn't surprised to find the second-floor corner she had been assigned vacant. There was no reason for an inmate to venture to the wing of offices and, unless something else had gone wrong, the elevator and doors had sealed as soon as the alarm went off. The guards handled the truly dangerous assignments; psychiatric staff was essentially assigned places to hide.

Martha resisted the urge to simply break the lock on the door. She had no wish to provide a horde of raving inmates with access to her defenseless colleagues. In a blur of speed, she headed into the women's bathroom, threw open the old-fashioned opaque class window and tumbled out of it backwards, straightening her body like a champion diver as she thumbed the device on her right hip that activated the statuesque blonde illusion that was Superwoman.

* * *

As screams of delight and rage – and the staccato blast of gunfire – played like some kind of eerie background music, Harvey crept cautiously down the row of solitary cells. The doors to the cells surrounding his were all open to some degree; the units themselves were empty, except for the one belonging to his neighbor, the nursery-rhyme caller. Harvey could see the man's black prison slippers sprawled on the concrete floor, his feet still inside them. Harvey pushed the bottom of his fist sideways against the broken door, opening it wider, and stepped inside to inspect the dead inmate, whose fishlike eyes stared up in mad amusement. His throat had been torn out. Harvey could tell from the jagged tatters of flesh that someone had used his fingers.

Feeling something loosen inside him, Harvey whispered, "_Pop goes the weasel_" and left his former neighbor gawking sightlessly at the ceiling.

* * *

As soon as she slipped out from the first-floor staff bathroom and locked the door behind her, Superwoman saw the bodies. One belonged to a medical student who had been allowed the rare rotation at Arkham, the other to a guard Martha had known since the first year of her fellowship. The student's neck had been broken, but the guard had been torn nearly apart; the pool of blood he lay in widened around Martha's sticky shoes as she checked for a pulse that wasn't there.

A hungry roar behind her died when the glut of inmates careening toward her from the far end of the hallway noticed her costume. They spun around immediately and started scrambling away. Catching them was easy enough. Finding a place to stow them was more problematic. Disliking her solution, but unable to think of another, Superwoman knocked a dozen of them unconscious and bound them with their own clothes. She hoped the makeshift bonds would hold them until the doors were fixed – or Batman arrived.

The most dangerous prisoners were housed in the north wing. Superwoman knew that if those cells were breached, they were probably long empty by now, but she couldn't afford not to check and she wanted to make sure Harvey was safe. She shot down the corridor, knocking out prisoners as she rocketed past them, praying she would reach Harvey before some murderous prisoner did. But when she reached the wing, she found only the dead inmate. Harvey, like the other prisoners, was gone.

* * *

_I should go back,_ Harvey told himself as he wandered through the corridors_. I should stay in my cell and wait this out. _But something propelled him forward, farther away from the tiny room he had so recently been afraid to leave. As if hypnotized, he moved forward, drawn toward an unknown fate he found irresistible. He remembered how it had felt, when he was Two-Face, to revel in these riots, to embrace that fleeting surge of power after so many years of helplessness. The memory made him shudder, though in revulsion or pleasure he did not know.

He stopped with a start as he realized he was standing in front of the medium-security cell Martha Kent had so blissfully presented to him as his new home. Harvey shook his head in disbelief. Had she been that naïve or he that foolish, he wondered. As he stared into the cell, he heard a wretched sobbing, then a few dull thumps – shoes against flesh – and a choir of malicious laughter. A broken voice began pleading. Forehead knotting in confused recognition of the simpering voice, Harvey felt his feet move around the next corner.

A knot of inmates were huddled around the curled form of Lawrence Adrienne. Harvey enjoyed a thrill of satisfaction at the sight of his petrified, bloody face.

"Please," Adrienne was begging through broken teeth. "Anything… I'll do anything… please don't…."

An inmate kicked him in the face, then looked up to spot a mesmerized Harvey.

"Two-Face," he said with an almost boyish admiration. "You're really here. I thought it was like… an urban legend, you being at Arkham."

Harvey stared at the younger prisoner and made the decision that would define the rest of his life.

"I'm here," he said jauntily, striding up to the group. He squatted down and shoved his hand into the sniveling director's pocket. He fished out a few coins and discarded all of them but one, a tarnished quarter. "And I'm also a legend."

He squinted at it with dissatisfaction. "This'll have to do," he said, and with a practiced flick, he sent the coin spiraling about a foot into the air before reclaiming it with a triumphant snatch. He gave Adrienne an idle kick and looked up at his new band of admirers.

"We're gonna kill him," another inmate said enthusiastically. "But Robbie says we should do it special."

"To make'em notice," explained the prisoner who had greeted Harvey with such reverence. "Make 'em know we ain't no punks in here, no matter how many pills they shove into us."

Adrienne started whimpering again. Harvey gave him another kick.

"Well, boys," he said with a wild grin. "I'm with you one hundred percent. You mind, though, giving an old man a chance to show a little creativity? I think you'll be pleased with the result."

The inmates looked at each other excitedly.

"Sure," Robbie said. "Whaddaya want us to do?"

Harvey reached down to grab Adrienne by the hair. "Just hang tight," he said. "Dr. Dick here and I are going to have ourselves a very special therapy session. Oh, don't worry," he added, as a few of them glanced awkwardly at Robbie. "I'll bring you back some parts to play with."

"No," Adrienne sobbed desperately. "Don't let him…. Don't let him take me."

His pleas erased any doubts Robbie and his cohorts might have had. "Go wild," the younger inmate advised Two-Face. "We'll be waiting right here."

Harvey tossed him the quarter. "A token of my good faith," he said grandly. Tightening his grip on Adrienne's hair, he started dragging the blubbering director down the hallway.

* * *

As desperately as Martha wanted to look for Harvey, Superwoman could not abandon the few guards who had remained at their posts when it became clear the asylum had been overrun. She felt like a robotic punching machine, knocking prisoners cold as she met them, then doubling back to bind bunches of them together before moving on to the next wing.

In the women's ward, most of the guards had fled. Some inmates there had turned on each other; many had hurried into the men's wings, which introduced an unexpected element into the riot. Martha had thought all of the prisoners had been prescribed a medication to diminish their sex drives. She learned that in several cases, at least, she had been mistaken.

"You have fun," Superwoman advised a newly acquainted couple as they looked up at her from the floor of a linen closet. She crushed the knob on the door, effectively sealing them in, and continued on to take care of the rest of the rioters, the majority of whom had embraced a more violent form of expression.

She had just barreled into a duo of prisoners who had wrestled away a machine gun from a disheveled guard and were preparing shoot him when she heard Lakeeta Reardon's voice over a bullhorn. The Gotham police had joined the battle. So, she realized as a black-gloved fist snapped the nose of a prisoner to her left, had Batman.

It was a thousand times better with him here, Superwoman thought as they advanced together upon the remaining rioters. He had brought a couple of Midori's force-fields with him; some of them were capable of containing dozens of prisoners. Superwoman had secured a good three-fourths of the asylum before Batman and the police had arrived. In minutes, they had most of the rest of it under control. She watched the Dark Knight take down three inmates with a 360-degree spinning hook kick.

"I have to find Harvey," she told him.

Batman looked up from the fallen prisoners. "Go."

_Please let him be OK_, Martha prayed as she took off through the institution's matrix of maze-like corridors. She wondered if someone had dragged or driven Harvey out of his cell or if he had seen the danger and found a safe placed to hide. _Just let him be safe_, she thought. _And sane_.

* * *

As soon as he'd dragged Adrienne around the corner of the corridor, Harvey looked down at the sobbing director, whose scalp was oozing blood from being pulled along by his hair. The hallways were now spookily quiet. Harvey reached down and jerked Adrienne to his feet, shoved the gibbering man against the cold tile wall and thrust his frightening face into his.

"Don't give me a hard time, Mr. Director," he said menacingly. "This is my part of the madhouse."

He pushed Adrienne forward, propelling the director toward the abandoned guard's office where Harvey had once demanded Martha Kent admit to being more than just a doctor for the Justice League. The lock was still broken. Harvey shoved the director inside and shut the door. He didn't bother to turn on the light.

Adrienne turned to him on rickety legs. "Don't kill me," he begged. Harvey raised an eyebrow at him. "Please…" he added piteously.

When Harvey didn't answer, Adrienne swung into a wild panic. "I'll have you lobotomized, you mutilated freak," he screamed. "I'll… I'll..." He dropped brokenly to the floor. "Two-Face… please…."

Harvey reached over and flipped on the light.

"Two-Face," he mused thoughtfully as he squatted in front of Adrienne and pulled the director's hands away from his eyes. "People are always mistaking me for him. I'm Harvey Dent."

Adrienne stared at him, uncomprehending. "You're… you're…."

"Going to save your sorry ass," Harvey informed him. "God knows why. Get up," he added. "My back hurts from dragging you around."

He chanced a quick look out the office window while Adrienne, nearly vibrating with fear, got unsteadily to his feet. "You're not going to kill me?"

"Not unless you don't shut up," Harvey told him, frowning at the voices he heard moving towards the small office. They sounded familiar and angry. Robbie and his friends had figured out they'd been betrayed. "I don't think we're going to be able to run," he added, crooking his finger around the light switch. "Get under the desk."

Before Adrienne could obey, there was an ugly, splintering sound and the door crashed into the side wall of the office. Five livid inmates stood scowling at Harvey.

"The part about you being a genius," Robbie said accusingly. "A master criminal. I guess that was the urban legend."

The badly injured Adrienne fell to the first beefy fist that struck him. Harvey tried to fight, but he was a few years past sixty. He lacked the strength and coordination to defend himself, but not the fortitude. Robbie's first punch drew blood; the second sent Harvey to his knees. But he was struggling to stand, determined to die on his feet, when there was another crash, a blur of commotion and he found himself being lifted to his feet by Superwoman.

"Are you OK?" she asked. Harvey squeezed his eyes together hard, clearing his head, then looked around the room. Six inmates and Adrienne were sprawled around the small room, all of them unconscious. Superwoman repeated her question.

Harvey nodded and used the back of his scarred hand to wipe the blood from his mouth.

"You were protecting Adrienne," she said.

He shrugged. "I'm an idiot."

"No," Superwoman said. "You're a hero.

"I told you," she added. Harvey gave her a sharp look. He had never met Superwoman before, let alone spoken to her.

"That Two-Face was gone," she elaborated and although her face seemed expressionless, Harvey could swear she was smiling.

"I won't tell anyone," he said automatically. Again, he could feel a smile transcend the bland features of the blonde illusion concealing Martha Kent.

"Tell anyone what?" she asked in the gentle Metropolis accent that he had come to treasure. She stepped across Robbie and slung Adrienne over her shoulder. The riot was over, she told him. And Harvey knew the war inside him was over, too.

* * *

When Reardon explained to Superwoman that the pathways to every electronically sealed door in the asylum and the institution's surveillance network had been severed without any damage to the remaining electrical systems, she could think of only one possible perpetrator. She raced immediately to Sean Fray's cell on the third floor; Batman was already there.

In a sense, what they found was a testament to the human spirit, albeit a twisted one. Despite the inhibitors and the drugs, Fray had managed to work up the will to invoke his powers enough to force open the cell doors. It had probably taken months of meditation and effort, Superwoman thought. You had to give him props for trying.

"Doesn't look like his plan worked out for him," Batman commented as he toed an unconscious Fray. The technopath's head lolled back and Superwoman bent down to check his pupils.

"Massive cerebral hemorrhage," she said. "I guess the strain was too much for him." She rose slowly. "You, on the other hand, managed to survive."

He shrugged. "Another riot."

"Not that," Martha said. Only she could see the grin in his eyes. To the rest of the world, even their colleagues, Batman's face would remain as deadpan as ever.

"Fray again?" he asked, knowing she hadn't meant him either.

"My mother," Superwoman told him. "I need to know all about that."

"Well, let's get out of here." he said, adding almost suggestively. "I'll give you a ride in the Batmobile."

"And I'll give you a ride in the Batcave," she responded. It would have been out of character for Batman to laugh. He merely inclined his head toward the door and followed her out of the cell.

* * *

Martha passed Bruce the thermos of hot green tea and gripped his gloved hand. "I still don't understand why you did that," she said as snowflakes wafted through the wooded lawn on the south side of Wayne Manor. "We hadn't even – we weren't even together. I mean, we were going to be, if I had anything to do with it, but –"

"This is really good tea," Bruce said. "You get this from that little shop in the mall?"

She nodded and he said, "It didn't matter. It wasn't about us getting together the way you're talking about. For me, we _were _together – before Parallax, before we became lovers. I just didn't realize it until it was almost too late.

"For what you had already given me," he said. "I wanted to take care of you. I know you don't think it makes sense, but humor me, OK?"

Uncomfortably, Martha asked, "But what about Dick and Tim? I'd really rather you –"

"I'm leaving Dick and Tim plenty," Bruce told her. "Most of it, though, goes jointly to you and Alfred, with each of you being the other's mandatory beneficiary. But you know... Alfred… he's almost 94…." He stopped for a moment, the snow squelching softly under the rubber sole of his boot.

Martha squeezed his hand. "I know, baby. I hate this subject," she added. "Let's change it."

He handed her back the thermos. "Speaking of changes," Bruce said. "Your name?"

Taking a long sip of tea, Martha said, "I wanted to tell you first. But when my mom brought it up…."

Bruce waited for a while, but she didn't continue. Finally, he asked, "Are you going to tell me what it is?"

She laughed and shoved the thermos back at him. "You're the detective. You tell me."

They walked quietly for a while, occasionally passing the thermos. Finally Bruce said, "Your mom really surprised me."

"She'll do that," Martha said. "I feel so much better, being able to really talk to her again. She took the idea of us having children thing really well," she commented.

"Well," Bruce made a circular gesture with his finger. "There was that mention of, uh, a ritual jewelry exchange."

Martha slanted her head at him and smiled. "There was that," she said. She glided upward until they were face-to-face and brushed the snow out of his hair. "There," she said. "Now you're young again."

"I have it on good authority that I'm going to be a miserable old bastard," Bruce told her.

Martha cupped his cheek with her hand and leaned in to kiss him. "_My_ miserable old bastard," she whispered. Bruce pulled her into his arms and the thermos fell steaming onto the snow-covered ground.

* * *

Harvey reached for another piece of pizza and glared at Martha.

"You're going to kill your stomach," he said. "With all of those hot peppers."

Martha grinned at him and continued to layer her slice with crushed red peppers. "I have a strong stomach," she assured him.

Harvey nodded. "I guess you do," he said. "So what's the occasion? You haven't bought me a pizza since the day we met."

"We're celebrating," she told him.

"That Adrienne's gone?" he asked her. "Or that Persky's back?"

Adrienne had quit the moment he'd regained consciousness in the clinic. He had, in fact, demanded to be taken immediately to the hospital, but triage protocols put him rather low on the transportation list. Eventually, he bribed a guard to drive him to Gotham General. He would have preferred Episcopal-Presbyterian, but it was too far out of the guard's drive home.

Even before Adrienne quit, a representative of the board of governors was on the phone to Devon Persky, begging him to return to the post he'd abandoned less than a year earlier. Persky, fingering a deep scar on his shoulder where an inmate had bitten him, expressed a great reluctance to do this, and agreed to come back only temporarily, at double his original salary.

Persky had barely stepped back into his old office when Martha Kent threw herself through the door and hugged him breathless. It was something that he got used to as the day went on. Everyone was gladder to have him back then they had been sorry to see him go.

"Both," Martha told him. "And something else."

"And that would be?" Harvey asked, washing his pizza down with a gulp of Dr. Pepper.

Martha waited until he took another bite and looked up at her, still chewing. "That you're stuck with me," she said. "Persky gave me the OK to remain your doctor after my fellowship is over."

Nearly dropping the can of soda, Harvey asked slowly. "Are you sure? And you want to?"

"I'm sure," Martha smiled. "And of course I want to."

Harvey ran a hand over his face. "Well, I'd be OK," he told her. "Even if you did leave."

"I know," she said. She reached for a napkin, then added hesitantly. "I have a favor to ask you."

Harvey lifted his brows.

"Batman finally picked up Victor Zsasz yesterday," Martha said. "And we need to put him in solitary."

"You could put him in Father Goose's old cell," Harvey said nervously.

"We could," Martha agreed.

"But the guards could keep a better watch on him," he said thoughtfully. "From mine."

"They could," she said.

"So you'd better let him have it," Harvey said. "I'll try out that other one."

Martha smiled. "Thank you, Harvey. There's just one more thing."

"I don't think I can take anything else," he warned her.

It was just that Persky had heard about Harvey risking his life to save Adrienne's, Martha explained. And while there had never been a riot on his watch, he was taking no chances.

"Persky needs a trusty," she said. "Someone he can count on. He asked if you were interested."

Harvey stared at her, then reached for his pizza. He ate in silence, chewing vigorously, occasionally punctuating his bites with swallows of soda. Finally, he asked, "Do I have to give you an answer now?"

"No. It's an open offer," Martha said. She picked up the container of peppers and began layering another slice. "We've got plenty of time."

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _Funeral for a friend_


	17. Chapter 17

Resolutely read by beta-reader **_arg914_**

* * *

**HAPPY** (slightly early) **BIRTHDAY SUPERMAN!**

* * *

As therapy, crimefighting didn't work for everyone, Batman thought, as he watched Arsenal's second arrow veer past its intended target. Unwilling to let the rabbiting carjacker escape just to preserve his companion's ego, the Dark Knight floored the felon with a lazily arcing batarang seconds before he scrambled around a brick wall.

Arsenal lowered his bow in self-disgust and trudged over to where the bad guy was sprawled face-down in a filthy, rain-soaked pothole. He groped irritably at his belt and pockets until Batman, who had quietly joined him, extended a pair of plastic manacles.

"Thanks," muttered Roy. He bound the unconscious criminal and hoisted him against the wall. "Sorry I'm…" he shook his head. "… not at my best tonight."

"You're all right," Batman said. He snuck a look at a timepiece concealed just under his left glove. They'd only been out for a couple of hours and already the night had become painfully long.

Martha had meant well in suggesting he take Roy on patrol. But the non-stop flow of muggers and burglars – and this carjacker – had failed to take Arsenal's mind off a dinner conversation at Wayne Manor that had sent him spiraling into misery. Batman half-wished Martha was a better liar. He could be patrolling with her now – or at least with an on-task Arsenal – instead of facilitating some sort of healing-through-combat session.

They had not seen Roy socially since his release from the hospital. He had spent a few days with Lian following his discharge. Taking care of her battered father had helped occupy her during her first week of officially living without a roommate – and Roy's need for company had been even greater. Over the next month and a half, he bounced between his daughter's apartment, Central City and Dick's place in Hideaway, returning to Deer Valley only during the alternating weeks when he had custody of RJ. When Bruce had gotten wind of his friend's reluctance to remain in his empty house, he invited Roy to spend a few days at Wayne Manor.

Alfred, who had liked Roy even before witnessing his agonizing charge from the hospital to reunite Bruce and Martha, prepared a table-full of their guest's favorite foods. It was when he saw the elderly butler uncover a dish of butternut squash-stuffed rigatoni that Roy produced the only smile of his visit that didn't look manufactured.

After assuring Martha that his ribs and collarbone were as healed as they had been the last time she examined him, Roy commented with as little wistfulness as he could manage that she and Bruce seemed to be doing OK living together. Alfred, who was hovering over him with a bowl of curry-peanut soup, noted dryly that this was in part because they had no housework to squabble over.

Martha had laughed. "Yeah, we both suck at that."

"We never argued about that sort of thing," Roy said, his eyes distant. Bruce and Martha shared an uneasy glance. "Midori was really neat and organized and I did most of the kitchen stuff." He blew on a spoonful of soup and brought it to his mouth.

"So how is she?" he had asked a moment later, plainly fighting to make this seem like a casual question. His eyes hovered furtively over Martha's uncomfortable expression before snaking a hand toward the wicker basket of home-made dinner rolls.

Martha looked hopefully at Bruce, but he volleyed the question back to her with a flick of his eyes. She was a lot closer to Midori than he was. Any news coming from him would be second-hand.

"OK," Martha had said eventually. She used a pair of silver tongs to pick up an ear of corn and busied herself with buttering it.

Roy fished an ice cube out of his water glass and eased it into the steaming bowl of sunset-colored soup. "She still interviewing potential fathers of her children in the grocery store?"

Martha aimed a sharp look at Bruce, who had developed an unnatural fascination with his mashed yams. After too long a pause, she said, "Actually, she's seeing someone."

Roy had set the soup spoon down in his rigatoni.

"Probably a really smart guy," he said, his counterfeit nonchalance offset by a voice that was nearly an octave higher. Roy had always feared that Midori might find him lacking in this area.

"Nuclear physicist," Martha told him apologetically.

"A _handsome_ nuclear physicist?" he had asked, his voice cracking slightly over the word "handsome."

She dumped a serving spoonful of ginger carrots on her crowded plate and mumbled unconvincingly, "I think you're better looking."

During the two dazed minutes it took Roy to process this news, only the occasional clatter of silverware against china broke the anxious stillness that had filled the room. All pretense of disinterest abandoned, he asked hoarsely, "Is she sleeping with him?"

Martha's eyes collided with Bruce's again before she said delicately, "She, um…. She seems to have finally developed an internal censor."

Roy's face had threatened to turn as green as Midori's.

"Excuse me," he whispered before walking quickly out of the dining room.

Bruce had given Martha a look that suggested a less forthright dialogue might have led to a more pleasant dining experience, but she protested that misleading their friend would have brought him to a deeper despondency when he learned the truth. Then she had urged Bruce to take Roy with him on patrol.

"He'll get himself killed," Bruce had objected. "He's in no shape to go out there."

Martha insisted the physical exertion and mental focus a tour with Batman required would keep Roy from masochistically fixating on Midori and the handsome nuclear physicist.

"You're his friend," she had added. Bruce accused her of taking guilt lessons from Alfred, but nonetheless asked Roy to accompany him, knowing it was the right thing to do.

It was a busy night, and by the end of it Roy did seem to feel better, but he left Wayne Manor the next day to visit an old friend in Seattle.

* * *

As readily as she had suggested Batman team up with Arsenal for the night, it had felt unpleasantly odd to Martha not to be out there herself. Although her sense of spontaneity was more broadly developed than Bruce's, he had gotten her used to a routine she found rewarding on many levels and it had taken her a while to figure out what to do with herself. She spent most of the night working on the proposal she was scheduled to present to the Wayne Foundation's executive board in a little more than a month.

Martha had written grant proposals before, but nothing close to this petition for the millions necessary to establish the research center on criminal behavior she and Bruce hoped to start building in the fall. She had not realized that she had free time until she lost nearly all of it to the venture.

After she had taken to dragging stacks of phonebook-sized reports and a laptop into their bed, Bruce had a contractor fit out a state-of-the-art office for Martha a few doors down from his own. It was a birthday present of sorts – she had turned thirty in mid-March – although not the one he had originally hoped to give her.

* * *

It was Alfred who suggested the surprise birthday party; it wasn't the kind of thing Bruce would have thought of on his own. Having been assured that throwing one would be a real boyfriend thing to do, he had called the one person he knew better than to exclude from the planning process.

"That's a really nice thought," Lois had told him gently. "But I don't think it's going to fly just yet."

Clark would not attend a party at Wayne Manor – or probably anywhere else as long as Bruce was there. Lois would not give him the details of the discussion she had had with her husband following her return from Gotham City, but Bruce gathered it had not gone well.

"I think I made a dent," she told him. "But it really wasn't a conversation. It was me talking and Clark listening for an emergency he could run off to."

For the first time since he and Martha had become involved, Bruce found himself exasperated with her father. He thought it unfair that Clark's refusal to deal with their relationship should interfere with her enjoyment of a landmark birthday. Bruce's own thirtieth – and his fortieth and fiftieth birthdays as well – would have passed unnoticed if Alfred hadn't presented him a cake on each of these occasions, but Martha loved to celebrate everything.

Bruce never told her about the aborted surprise party. She was thrilled by the smaller gathering Alfred put together with Lian, Meera, Midori, Clay, the Graysons and Jim Gordon in attendance. Bruce had also invited Tim, but upon learning that Martha's best friend would be there, he apologetically begged off. The only clumsy moment in the evening came when Clay, in between forkfuls of chocolate cake, commented that it was a shame that Batman wasn't a party kind of guy, because the last time they had met – the Dark Knight had made a rare appearance at a charity picnic when the youngest Kent was seven – Clay had nearly wet his pants. He was hoping to make a better impression.

"You'll just wet your pants again," Martha had said, grinning at Bruce's reflection in her empty plate.

A second party was held in Metropolis the Sunday after Martha's birthday. Things had gone smoothly, she told Bruce, until her Uncle Ron asked what she hoped to do after her fellowship ended. As Martha explained her plans to establish an institute on criminal behavior under the joint auspices of Gotham University and the Wayne Foundation, Clark had hastily dropped his salad fork in his lap so the Troupes would not notice he had compressed the handle to the thickness of a toothpick.

While Clark Kent would not speak to Bruce Wayne, or about him, Superman's relationship with Batman seemed strangely unaffected. They managed to sustain a decades-old professionalism towards each other during their missions with the League, although Lian confided to Roy that she was "weirded out" being in the same conference room with both of them.

Despite Clark's enduring intractability, Lois predicted he would not be able to cling to his silence much longer and she was right. Change came in the form of two events, one tragic, the other calamitous. The first occurred in mid-April when, almost a year from the time her family and friends had prematurely mourned the loss of Martha Kent, the members of the Justice League found themselves attending another funeral.

* * *

When the call came from Roy, Martha was sitting next to Bruce in the small room in the batcave where he worked on his fighting suits. She was plowing through the monstrously thick grant proposal while he labored over the costume he was designing to go with her new identity. Bruce had guessed her chosen code name the minute he'd stepped into the kitchen after their walk in the mid-February snow. He was pleased with her choice and even more delighted to learn Martha wanted to go retro on the suit, opting for a real costume, rather than to continue using a hologram. You couldn't store gadgets in a technological mirage.

Bruce was having a lot of fun – his brand of fun, at least, which entailed obsessing over details and very little smiling – working on her costume, which they agreed should include in its design a subtle tribute to Superman. Once it was finished, Martha planned to present the suit – and the name that went with it – to her father. She wanted his approval before introducing her new identity to the world.

"Can you come over?" Roy asked, without bothering to say hello. "I'm at Lian's."

Martha frowned into her cell phone and told him she and Bruce would be there within the half-hour.

"He sounded terrible," she told Bruce, as he put down a hot knife and ran a hand through his hair. "I hope Midori isn't pregnant with Dr. Science's baby."

Bruce commented that this sort of development seemed counter to the Coluan's stated objective of being married for a year before attempting to conceive, but Martha couldn't think of much else that would elicit the kind of heartbreak she had heard in their friend's voice. If Midori had merely announced her engagement to the nuclear physicist, Roy would have had time to try to break them up.

But when Lian opened the door to the apartment, she looked as devastated as her father had sounded. She perched fretfully on the arm of the stuffed chair where Roy sat, chalky-faced. He handed Martha a scrap of paper on which he'd taken shaky notes.

"How bad is this?" he asked as she scanned the slip. "Is it curable?"

It was a diagnosis of an advanced case of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma – a form of cancer that was usually incurable even in its early stages.

"This isn't you?" she asked, her voice thin with fear.

"No," Roy said and looked at her pleadingly. Martha shook her head. Roy dropped his face into his hands and started to sob. Lian, too, began to cry.

"You said it wasn't you!" Martha said in a panic. Bruce tugged the note from her hand.

Lian looked up at her through a curtain of tears. "Dinah," she said.

Martha heard the paper crumple in Bruce's fist. He dropped heavily onto the frayed couch, looking as pale as Roy.

Although Martha had been in her teens when Dinah Lance retired as the Black Canary and had only met her a few times, she knew a lot about the legendary Justice Leaguer from Lian, who had always looked upon Dinah as something like a very young grandmother. Martha knew Dinah had always been an extraordinary presence in Roy's life, having helped him through heroin withdrawal when his supposed mentor, Oliver Queen, had abandoned him. Bruce had also spoken with admiration of his old teammate. Several of the stories Martha had coaxed out of him included amusing reminiscences of the Black Canary's banter-laced battles against foes who seemed to chronically underestimate her.

Martha rushed to the couch to take Bruce's hand and was relieved to feel his fingers close around hers rather than pull away. "I'm sorry," she said. Everyone was too lost in their own grief to answer her.

Bruce barely spoke during the drive home and spent most of the evening before patrol skimming old reports from League archives that chronicled missions with the Black Canary. Martha, who was still learning how best to comfort him when he was deeply upset, came over to rub his shoulders and Bruce pointed to a newspaper photo of Dinah clocking two burly robbers with a split side kick. He remarked that she had always been one of the League's better martial artists.

He seemed to feel better after patrol, afterwards accepting Martha's offer to fly him to Seattle to see his old comrade. But before Bruce could find out what hospital she was in, Roy called again to tell him that Dinah had died.

* * *

Jacinto Rey, Dinah's second husband, had asked Roy to come to Seattle a few days early to help him with the final arrangements for the funeral. Dinah's diagnosis had been sudden – she had absently mentioned having a doctor's appointment just weeks earlier, when Roy had gone to visit her after hearing about Midori's new boyfriend. Neither Jacinto nor their children had much time to digest Dinah's prognosis before she fell victim to it. Her husband sounded as hollow over the phone as Roy had felt. Glad for this final thing he could do for the woman he believed had saved his life, Roy asked a neighbor to stop by during the coming week to keep an eye on RJ. Then he started packing.

It was only April and already one of the worst years of his life, Roy reflected as he listened idly to the brush of RJ's bushy tail against the foot of the bed. His girlfriend had walked out on him and now she was with someone else. He relived nightly the trauma of watching Lian's lifeless body jerk under the force of defibrillator paddles. His broken ribs and collarbone had healed and he was back on full duty, but his shoulder and the muscles on his left side were perpetually sore. And now Dinah was gone. He would never again hear her amused, throaty voice as she mussed up his hair and called him "Speedy Gonzales" or feel the drape of her slim arm across his shoulders as she listened, with matchless empathy, to his lament over the endless wretcheness that was his love life. It had taken Dinah a long time to find the kind of love she deserved. She had hoped Roy would eventually find it too.

He tossed a handful of socks into the open suitcase, barely noticing the jingle of RJ's collar tags as the dog's head popped up with sudden alertness.

"What's up?" Roy tiredly asked RJ, who was now clambering to his feet. He poked Roy with a wet black nose and raced from the room. Roy leaned toward his open dresser, grabbed a fistful of boxer briefs and tossed them into the suitcase. He had an early flight and needed to get into bed. If he stopped to play with RJ, he was sure he'd end up forgetting to pack something important.

He made an irritable sound as the dog bounded back into the bedroom, nosed him again and scampered back down the long hallway. Rolling his eyes, Roy followed RJ into the living room in time to hear the doorbell ring.

His eyes found the mantelpiece clock. It was close to eleven. Wally always let himself in and Roy didn't know anyone else who would bother him this late. He leaned into the peephole and nearly ripped the door off its hinges trying to open it.

Midori stood on the porch, a small suitcase by her feet. Her yellow eyes were filled with uncertainty.

"Lian called me," she faltered as Roy gaped at her in openmouthed wonder. "And I called Martha. To bring me here. But I can go, if…."

Roy fell upon her and started sobbing into her neck. Stroking his hair, Midori whispered that she knew he was sad, but that it was going to be OK. And then she proved it, pressing kisses against his wet eyes before bringing her lips to his mouth.

* * *

Superman and Batman had enjoyed relatively ironclad secret identities largely because few people considered that they might have them. Lore had Batman hibernating in a dank subterranean crypt during the day and prowling the rooftops at night, while Superman was so constantly in the public eye that it seemed impossible that he could have time for a private life. Other crimefighters and superheroes, like the Harpers and the Flash were open about their identities, but most of their comrades fell somewhere in between.

There had been whispers for years in Seattle that the chic little flower shop at the corner of First and Western was owned by the former Black Canary. Dinah neither encouraged nor denied the rumors. The average curiosity seeker ended up buying more expensive arrangements than customers who had actually wandered into the shop in search of flowers. When Dinah married Jacinto Rey, one of her suppliers, he would merely smile mysteriously when asked if his wife had really been _the_ Black Canary.

Dinah had left it up to Jacinto to decide whether her death should open the door on her years as the crimefighting canary. He and their sons would have to live with it; she herself, she had joked weakly, would not be bothered for so much as an autograph. After hours of discussion with Roy – who spent most of the conversation gripping Midori's hand – Dinah's family elected to bring her out of the superhero closet. For all of her years of suffering and sacrifice, they agreed, she deserved the recognition. Dinah would have a hero's funeral.

There was no question where she would have wanted them to hold the memorial. The mayor agreed immediately to close off Washington Park Arboretum, Dinah's favorite spot in the city and the place where Jacinto had proposed to her twenty years earlier.

It had been raining for a week, but on the afternoon of the funeral, a gauzy spring sun knocked apart the thatch of dense gray clouds. Roy, Midori, Lian and Dinah's family arrived at the arboretum under the escort of a National Guard honor squad.

They arranged to meet with her pallbearers in a small greenhouse in the westernmost gardens. The Flash arrived first, followed by Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman. Along with Arsenal and Quiver, they prepared to lift their departed comrade through the azaleas, magnolia trees and camellias she had so adored.

Jacinto was too grief-stricken to be overawed by the presence of some of the world's most legendary superheroes. He thanked his wife's colleagues for coming and led his sons to the memorial site, where an ocean of chairs stretched back for almost an acre. Midori squeezed Roy's hand and followed them. At first, Dinah's former teammates spoke very little while they waited for the signal to start toward the site of the ceremony. Then the Flash, with a tentative grin, recalled the time she had single-handedly taken on a surprised Royal Flush Gang. Wonder Woman threw in a story about Dinah, Circe and a gaggle of murderous geese and soft laughter filled the greenhouse.

Hearts heavier than the coffin they carried, the pallbearers trudged toward the long block of marble facing out toward the crowd of mourners. Meera, the Green Lantern, Superwoman and Midori stood solemnly to one side of the stone slab; Dinah's family gathered on the other. Every costumed crimefighter in the nation – and several representing the worldwide community – seemed to be there: Nightwing, Starfire and the Outsiders, Robin, Goldenboy and the Titans, a limping Triumph and a teary Suprema.

Retired heroes – John Stewart, Buddy Baker, even a paunchy bitter-faced Guy Gardner – sat amid dignitaries, celebrities and Dinah's many friends. Lois Lane and Linda Park were among the press presence, but neither of them seemed to be taking notes.

The service was simple, poignant and brief. Roy managed to get through a short eulogy without breaking down; Dinah's husband did not do quite as well. Halfway through his speech, he stopped, choked out a barely audible "sorry," and hurried back to his weeping sons.

Superwoman listened with reverence as a minister spoke briefly of Dinah's bravery and good humor, not only in the fight against evil, but with her brief but intense battle with cancer. Under the expressionless hologram, Martha's eyes lingered on Batman. Although his stoic features remained unchanged, she could see that he was doing badly. He blamed himself for not rushing to Seattle after first hearing of Dinah's illness, though he had clearly needed the steadying night of patrol to cope with the sad news. There would be a gathering of family and friends after the service. Martha already knew Bruce would not want to stay for it.

She glanced over at Midori and saw the ache in her luminous yellow eyes as she stared sorrowfully at Roy. Their reunion – Martha hoped mightily that's what it was – seemed the one positive thing to come out of this unforeseen tragedy.

Martha's eyes shifted to her father, whose face was streaming unselfconscious tears. There were biological factors to Superman's ability to handle an extraordinary amount of stress and depression – his Kryptonian physiology produced perfectly balanced serotonin levels – but his heart was as vulnerable as any human's. He would miss his friend.

As the ceremony ended and people started moving toward the parking lot, Martha saw her father step next to Batman. Both men stared past the retreating mourners for a moment, then Superman flashed a strained look at his colleague and uttered a few words. They barely registered: Martha could tell from the vacant look in her lover's eyes and the brief wooden movement of his lips. Superman stood there for a few moments, as if he were waiting for more of an answer, and finally turned away.

* * *

They were back in Gotham before the first course had been served at a catering hall donated by the Florists Association for Dinah's memorial luncheon. Bruce headed immediately to bed. The night before the funeral had been particularly busy – he hadn't slept in over a day.

He did not move when Martha slipped under the heavy covers with him and she wondered if she had done the right thing in joining him. She could read Bruce well in nearly every circumstance, but they had never experienced a death together.

She wanted to ask what her father had said to him, but knew it was the wrong time. Stroking his knotted back, she asked, "Do you want to be alone?"

"No," he said.

She wrapped her arms around him. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Bruce said. "Can you please not die?"

He was suffering from more than the considerable loss of a valued comrade, Martha realized. Jacinto's anguish had left a mark on Bruce – as it had on her. Her hand stilled against his shoulder as she reflected on the timeliness of what she was about to say.

After a while, she suggested tentatively, "There's only one real way I know that people have been able to keep at least a part of themselves alive."

Bruce was still for a few seconds, then he rolled over and searched her face.

"Are you sure?" he asked, when he finally found his voice.

"Yes," Martha said simply.

He did not take his eyes off of her as he reached across her into the nightstand drawer and withdrew the silver bracelet that inhibited Martha's superpowers. It was a necessary ingredient in the plans they had just made.

Holding her wrist to his chest, Bruce flicked open the bracelet with his free hand and asked again, "You're sure?"

Martha nodded and he drew her fingers to his lips, kissing them before he snapped on the bracelet and moved with her into the next stage of their lives.

* * *

It was dark when Roy and Midori returned to Deer Valley several days after the funeral and it was too late for her to make arrangements to head back to Hudson. But as he pulled her suitcase off of the baggage claim carousel in Durango, Roy noticed, not for the first time, how small it was. She had already had to wash all of the clothes she brought with her while they were in Seattle.

Midori had been Roy's only comfort during those painful days. She held him, murmuring understanding as he tried to articulate the depth of his feelings of loss. When he told her how much he had missed her, Midori confessed that she could never stop loving him and added with characteristic gravity that she had tried. And from the night Roy had found her on his porch, they had become lovers again.

But it still wasn't clear to Roy whether she had come back to him. He had not asked Midori about the nuclear physicist she had been seeing and she had not mentioned him. Nor had she said anything about the possibility of returning to upstate New York, either to stay or just to retrieve her things.

The next morning, Roy found her doing her laundry again. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, rocking her backwards into his broad chest.

"I'm taking you to breakfast," he said.

"OK," Midori answered, bringing up her hand to caress the back of his neck.

The rustic café where they shared fruit crepes, French toast and grits – which Midori, had she the choice, would have eaten with every meal – sat on a small lake by a woodsy, exquisitely tended hiking trail. Afterwards, they walked the mulch-covered path, holding hands the way they always had when Midori had lived in Deer Valley.

About a quarter-mile into the woods, there was a small, fragrant clearing trimmed with newly sprouted tulips and several varieties of wildflower. Roy stopped as they passed a cluster of daffodils and reached for Midori's other hand.

"Have you come back to me?" he asked, his heart pummeling his ribs so hard that he thought they might break again.

"Is that what you want?" Midori asked tremulously.

The words coming truer and easier than he had ever imagined, Roy said, "I want you to marry me."

Her golden eyes began to fill. "We don't have to," she said. "We can go back to how it was before."

Roy gave a soft, ironic laugh and shook his head. "No," he said. "You only get to stay if you're going to make an honest man out of me."

"But you're already very truthful," said Midori, bewildered by what seemed to her a bizarre shift in focus. "And it's your job to uphold the law."

Despite his nervousness, Roy started to laugh. "Then make a happy man out of me," he said. "You're the only one who can."

"Then I'd better," she told him. "I can't seem to be happy when you're not."

She had missed him terribly, Midori told Roy as they lay together a few hours later in the bed that was once again theirs. But she had not really understood how miserable he had been until Lian phoned her on the day that Dinah had died.

"You were spending so much time with your friends," she said. "I thought you were having fun."

Roy gave the quilt a tug and smoothed it over her shoulders. "I couldn't stand being alone in this house," he said. He nodded toward the oversized retriever, who was lying with boneless contentment across the foot of the bed. "It was easier when I had RJ, but without you here…."

He took a deep breath and said, "So we haven't talked, you know, about the baby thing."

"It's all right," Midori said. She stared forlornly into his chest. "I can have fun watching Ryand'r and maybe Lian and Martha will have babies someday and let me play with them."

Roy stroked her hair for a few moments, then abruptly untangled himself from her embrace. Without speaking, he stepped into his jeans and walked out of the bedroom. Midori followed him curiously as he walked barefoot across the cold stone floor of the garage, found an old, oversized cardboard box and dragged it into the room that had once been her office.

It had been chilly in the garage. Midori saw goosebumps raised on Roy's reddened skin as he eased onto the floor and started pulling pieces of polished pine from the battered box.

"What's that?" she asked. Roy looked up from the pile of polished wood and gave her a crooked grin.

"Lian's crib," he said.

* * *

The supermarket delivery had come more than an hour late, so Alfred was running a bit behind with dinner. Martha decided to let Bruce sleep for a few extra minutes while she gave the last section of her proposal another once over. She scooted back, cross-legged, against the old mahogany headboard and flipped open her laptop. The few minutes turned into nearly half an hour when the cell phone she had stuck on the nightstand started to rattle against the wood countertop.

She flipped open the phone, moving her fingers through Bruce's hair as he stirred beside her.

It was Midori. "Roy and I are going to get married and have babies," she announced joyfully.

"That's _great_," Martha said as Roy's voice protested in the background, "_One_ baby."

She mouthed the happy news to Bruce, who propped himself up on an elbow. Midori rattled off a few tentative wedding plans and then an exuberant Roy got on the phone and demanded to talk to Bruce. Martha put the phone on speaker and set it between them.

"I'll bet you a year's salary that I can marry Midori and knock her up before you can do the same to Martha," Roy told him.

"Fine," Bruce said evenly. "If you win, I'll match a year of your salary. If I win, you match a year of mine."

There was silence on the other end of the line as Roy processed the math. "Wait," he said.

Bruce took the phone off speaker and handed it back to Martha.

"No, Roy," she said a few moments later. "I won't put Bruce back on the phone."

After she hung up, Bruce asked, "Think they'd make it a double wedding?"

Martha slid close to him under the warm sheet. "A woman wants her own wedding," she informed him. "Anyway," she added pointedly, "I don't know anyone else who's been proposed to."

Bruce smiled.

"Put on that magic bracelet," he said, and she saw that he had left it out on the top of the nightstand. "I'm not losing that bet."

She picked it up, but said seriously, "You know this might not work."

"Why not?" Bruce asked. "With that thing around your wrist, your ova are as penetrable as any other woman's."

Martha gave a small shrug. "I could be… I don't know. A sterile hybrid. Like a mule."

"A mule," Bruce repeated. He pulled Martha on top of him and closed the bracelet around her wrist. "A lot of women try to turn on their boyfriends by comparing themselves to a mule. But only you can pull it off."

She giggled and Bruce said seriously, "Then we adopt. But we've barely gotten started. Let's give it some time. And effort," he added, as she bend down to kiss him.

"I foresee a lot of practice," she advised him.

"Then let's get started," he said, nodding toward the bedroom window. "There's crime out there waiting to be fought."

"I hate to break it to you," Martha said, interrupting herself to press a slightly longer kiss against his mouth. "But the crime's not going anywhere."

"Neither are we," Bruce said.

He was halfway right, she thought as a third kiss ended the spoken part of their conversation. Gotham's costumed guardians weren't going anywhere. But Bruce Wayne and Martha Kent hadn't come anywhere close to the end of their journey.

* * *

**Next Chapter**: _A torch passed, another visit to Crime Alley – and Midori gets a last name.

* * *

_


	18. Chapter 18

* * *

Infinite thanks to beta reader _arg914_ and technical advisor, _The Five Foot Ninja_

* * *

Parker had never been one to lock himself into his bedroom, but the two inches of space the teen-ager had left between the frame and the edge door seemed to say "Come and get me."

As Wally blurred in and out of the small opening – reconnaissance, he told himself, for this vital parental mission – he felt his chest tighten in instinctive sympathy for his son, who was lying, face-down on his bed, his shaggy hair draped haphazardly across his slightly blemished features. Parker's one visible eye stared in sightless gloom at a splayed-open martial arts magazine on the floor of his messy bedroom. A gawky arm dangled over the side of the mattress, fingers skimming the floor.

"Don't go easy on him," Linda had warned before sending Wally to deal with their youngest son's latest high-school mishap. "Especially about something like this."

Wally gave a reluctant rap on the door frame and waited for his son to invite him. Parker didn't move.

"Park," Wally said gently, and pushed the door open another foot.

"Yeah?" Parker asked, in a low, defeated voice.

Wally asked if he could come in and Parker slowly pulled himself up to a sitting position. This was as close to a welcome as he was going to get, Wally decided, noting that Parker's eyes remained fixed on the magazine. He eased beside his son on the rumpled bed and asked, "What happened?"

"Who cares?" Parker mumbled with a mixture of sullenness and self-pity.

"I do," Wally replied. He considered reassuring Parker that his mother cared, too, but he was positive his son would take issue with this claim.

Parker muttered a few inarticulate – but distinctively whiny – syllables. Wally could read the denial in his son's tone, but wasn't sure of much else.

"Your mom said you got into a fight," Wally said, glancing at him.

"No," Parker responded adamantly.

Wally's first impulse was to believe his son, but he remembered the conviction with which Parker had denied cheating the previous year and ruefully pressed forward.

"So what happened?" he asked. "The principal said the other kid had to lie down in the nurse's office for more than an hour.

"That's because he's a _wuss_," Parker blurted. "I didn't touch him. He's just a pu –"

"Parker," Wally said firmly.

"He's a bully," Parker said. "He's mean to everybody." In a smaller voice he added, "Especially me."

Wally scooted a little closer to him on the bed. "What do you mean?"

"Before I got my powers, he called me the Flash's slow son," Parker said miserably. "Him and all his friends. And then, when I got fast, they said I was still slow in the head."

The disclosure was visibly painful to Parker and Wally remembered how deeply a bully's words could scar the adolescent heart. His son had never mentioned being teased before.

"Does your mother know about this?" Wally asked.

Parker nodded. "When I was in middle school, she went in to talk to the principal a few times, but they kept saying stuff to me when no one was looking."

When he recounted the conversation to Linda later, Wally could not say which emotion plagued him more – his anger or his guilt. Parker, the most sensitive of their three children, had been tormented, possibly for years, simply for being his father's son. With her rapid wit and cutting tongue, Iris could have verbally decimated her persecutors. Barry would have grinned and later perpetrated some act of undetectable revenge. But Parker was different – quiet, introspective and nowhere near as confident as his older siblings. Wally didn't have to ask why his younger son had never complained to him about being teased before.

"He didn't want to upset you," Linda confirmed. "Because you're just as sensitive as he is."

She was right. Wally's gut reaction – that the bullying little bastard had deserved it – was so close to his lips that he had to mash them together.

Instead, he said quietly, "You know how kids are, Park. If they didn't pick on you for being the Flash's son, they'd rag you something else – being too short or too tall or – I don't know – having knobby knees."

Parker nodded. "I didn't act like a hero."

Wally felt his heart constrict again. How many times, over the years, had he felt himself undeserving of that weighty title? "Well, what did you do?"

"I just tapped him on the shoulder," Parker said. At his father's skeptical look, his son added, "A lot of times."

The bully – his name was Geoff – had grabbed a piece of paper Parker was scribbling on and started reading it aloud. Parker snatched the paper back, but Geoff had skimmed the whole thing by then and was publicly mocking Parker over its contents.

Blinded by humiliation and rage, Parker had barely resisted the urge to belt his tormenter, but at the last second, he held back. It was a good call; even a weak blow, delivered at super-speed, could be deadly. Instead, Parker had orbited around the kid in a blizzard of motion, tagging him on one shoulder before whirling around in the opposite direction to smack him on the other. Geoff, no great brain, spun back and forth in response to the rapid-fire taps, eventually making himself so dizzy that he nearly fainted. Vertigo and embarrassment had kept him in the nurse's office. Otherwise he had been unharmed.

Soaring with silent pride at his son's innovative method of bully prevention, Wally asked Parker what had been on the piece of paper that had started the conflict.

The teen's face reddened and Wally wondered for a minute if it might have been a note to a girl. But after nearly a minute of silence, Parker let out a long sigh and said, "Just some names."

Names? "Of girls?" Wally asked.

Parker gazed at his father as though he was impossibly dense. "Of _names_," he said. "_For me_."

Suddenly understanding, Wally said, "A fighting name. For when you're –"

"Yeah," Parker said. "If you'll ever let me. After this."

Wally moved a hand to Parker's shoulder. "So what'd you come up with?" he asked.

"Nothing good," Parker said. "Iris and Barry got the last cool names."

Wally's eyes traced the rounded contours his son's disheartened face. "How about 'the Flash?' " he asked.

Parker stared at him.

"If you don't mind another hand-me-down," Wally added. "I know you've got a closet full of them."

Parker usually had an answer for everything, but this time he did not seem to know what to say.

"I figure by the time you're ready to put on a mask, I'll be ready to take mine off," Wally explained.

"But what if Iris wants it?" Parker asked. "Or Barry?"

Wally grinned. "They've already got cool names. Anyway, you know what they say. The baby in the family always gets the best."

"When?" Parker asked huskily.

"Soon," Wally told him. In the month since Dinah's funeral, he'd spent a lot of time thinking about how he wanted his own story to end. "Your mother's been waiting twenty-five years to spend a little time with me. I think all of her patience is about to pay off. Poor woman," he added.

"Will you train me?" Parker asked.

"Oh, yeah," Wally said. "It'll be grueling. You're gonna hate me."

In what would be one of the last childlike gestures of his life, Parker leaned his head against his father's shoulder and Wally knew that his most important memories would have nothing to do with battling supervillains.

"Now I have to punish you," he said apologetically.

"OK," Parker said, without lifting his head.

* * *

Slightly bedraggled businessmen, most of them with cell phones already clamped to their ears, streamed distractedly through the airplane gate. Bruce squinted expectantly past them. Next time Martha had to fly this way, he told himself, he would insist that she did it first class. Those passengers deplaned first.

He saw a flash of pink backpack behind the sleeve of a dark suit and shifted slightly to see the rest of her. She was chatting animatedly with Devon Persky, whose baggy eyes suggested a long flight. As they stepped past the gate, Martha broke off the conversation and looked around the secured waiting room, abandoning her boss the moment she saw Bruce.

"How'd it go?" Bruce asked, extending a hand to the director without taking his other arm from around Martha's shoulders.

"Three days in San Diego," Persky replied wryly. "How could it be bad unless you never got to leave the hotel?" He aimed an accusing look at Martha.

"It was a conference," Martha protested. "You're supposed to go to all those seminars."

Persky and Bruce exchanged a jaded glance. "Tell me about it in a couple of years," Persky said. "When you've been running that institute of yours for a while and suddenly you can't remember when you've last seen the sun."

"Dr. Persky's going to talk to the board about hooking up with us," Martha told Bruce. "What could be better than a partnership with Arkham?"

"Ten hours in the air back and forth," Persky put in. "Guess what I was wheedled into reading the whole time?"

Bruce grinned. "Well, that proposal is fascinating reading." He asked the director if he could call him a car. "Martha and I have reservations, or I'd give you a ride myself."

Persky thanked him, but said he'd parked at the airport.

"We have reservations?" Martha asked, as they watched the director stride down the concourse towards a sign that read "Baggage Claim."

Bruce gave her a funny look. "You remember what today is?"

"Yeah," Martha said delightedly. She squeezed Bruce's hand. "And so do you."

He was bad at remembering special dates, Bruce admitted to Martha as he stirred a steaming cup of Bistro Cilantro's trademark peanut-carrot soup. But he didn't see how she imagined he could forget this one.

"The first day of June," Martha said. "When I fell back into that crater. Born again," she added, joking.

Bruce didn't smile. "I was born again," he said quietly.

Martha rounded the small table to kiss him.

"Everything's been so wonderful since then," she said and Bruce smiled inwardly at her selective amnesia. She'd apparently forgotten about the hellish week she'd experienced after her return, Adrienne's ongoing persecution and the horrible days in early February when Bruce had almost let his fear of losing her drive them apart.

And then there was Clark. He had made an attempt, of sorts, to speak to Bruce at Dinah's funeral, but Bruce had been too absorbed in his grief to connect the handful innocuous words with the gesture they represented. Clark was not at the Daily Planet the next day when Bruce called in an attempt to reconnect. The voice mail he left was never returned.

"You're not eating," Martha commented, nodding at his soup.

"I had a big lunch," Bruce lied. He listened idly to her account of the conference, a three-day symposium on the causes of and possible treatments for violent sociopathological behavior. Along with Persky, Martha had been sent there to represent Arkham, but she had brought along a briefcase full of disks containing her proposal and had spent as much time as she could making contacts.

The Wayne Foundation's board of directors had green-lighted the venture a week earlier. Not wanting to overtly influence the meeting, Bruce had not attended it, but a board member called him later to tell him that Martha's proposal had been so impressive that her relationship with Bruce had only marginally influenced the decision to approve it.

"You're not having coffee?" Martha asked, as he asked the waitress to box his half-eaten plate of risotto. Bruce shook his head.

He saw the curious tilt of her head when he headed the jag down a stretch of road that would take them far southwest of Wayne Manor.

"We're going to the Narrows?" she asked.

"Just for a second," Bruce replied. His fingers closed tighter around the steering wheel.

Crime Alley felt and smelled as it always did – rancid and hopeless and ever-threatening. Bruce waited for Martha to step out of the car and thumbed a tiny button on his keychain. An invisible electrical field enveloped the jaguar. It carried enough of a jolt to stun a possible car thief without being strong enough to inspire a lawsuit.

"Are we working?" Martha asked him as he reached for her hand.

"No," he said. He led her over the crumbling cobblestones.

They stopped at a lamppost near the end of the alley. Martha looked up at the bright yellow light. "This thing was out the last time we were here."

"I had it fixed," Bruce said. His right hand moved past her to touch the cool metal. He took a deep breath.

"I know this is probably the wrong place for more reasons than I can mention," he told Martha. "But this lamppost seems to carry a lot of luck."

He plunged his hand into his pocket and in a single fluid motion, drew out a small velvet box and flipped it open. Inside was a tasteful, exquisitely patterned diamond ring. His mother's ring. "Will you marry me?"

He thought he'd been telegraphing his intentions all night, but as Martha's face swung from the ring to his hopeful eyes, Bruce could tell he had surprised her. He felt the air leave his lungs as she threw herself from the broken brick sidewalk, nearly knocking the box from his hand as her mouth collided with his in a bruising kiss.

"Does that mean yes?" Bruce asked, after a quick sweep for loose teeth with the tip of his tongue.

"It means yes," Martha said. "Now put that ring on my finger."

He did and, a little more gently, they kissed again. They took their time walking through the alley on the way back to the jag, stopping, for a moment, at the spot where he had lost his parents. Bruce was sure he could feel their presence – and that on this night, they were proud of him.

* * *

Lian thrust a hand through the opening in her apartment door and dragged Martha inside by the front of her blouse.

"Let's see it," the redhead demanded. Martha looked over at Iris, who had gotten to her feet and was standing a bit awkwardly by the living room couch.

"Hey, Iris," Martha said.

"Hi," Iris said. She felt a little weird around Martha. Since Thanksgiving, Iris and Lian had rediscovered a friendship that had fallen apart in their teens, when Lian, as she now so cheerfully put it, "had gotten a little skanky." The reunion had come at a perfect time for the redhead. Since Martha's return from the desert planet and subsequent coming together with Bruce Wayne, Lian had found herself walking into an empty apartment more often than not. Still, Iris didn't want Lian's former roommate to think she was trying to horn in on their lifelong and wholly indestructible friendship.

Lian smacked Martha on the shoulder and then rapidly fanned her open palm as though she had burned it. "_Come on_."

Martha held out her left hand.

"Please don't tell anyone," Martha said to Iris as Lian gushed ecstatically over the ring. "We want to keep the engagement quiet until after Roy and Midori's wedding. The focus should be on them right now, not us."

"Also, you haven't told your father," Lian commented, as she twisted Martha's hand toward the light and gazed blissfully at the glittering diamonds.

"We're working on that," Martha admitted. "We've told Clay and my mom. And Alfred – as you can imagine – is doing handstands. But no one else knows."

Bruce wanted to get married as soon as Roy and Midori came back from their honeymoon, Martha said. They were hoping for a low-key ceremony on the grounds of Wayne Manor, but this plan was now under scrutiny. Lois and Alfred had already started to wrest control of the wedding away from them and while Martha was willing to put up a fight, Bruce, recognizing a losing battle, had already surrendered himself to their will.

Lian released Martha's hand and gave her a suspicious look. "What's the hurry? And why does my father suddenly not want to wait a year to have a kid? I got the impression it had something to do with you and Bruce."

"I have no idea," Martha said innocently.

Lian pulled her by the sleeve to the coffee table, where half a pizza still lay in an open box.

"Iris likes hot peppers, too," Lian said, handing Martha a jar of them. "I'm trying to get her to hook up with the League. Tell her what a great doctor you are."

"I'm a great doctor," Martha assured Iris. "But hopefully, I'll mainly be standing around doing nothing and you'll start to wonder why they bother keeping me."

Iris settled onto the rug beside her, crossed her legs under the coffee table and reached for the peppers. "Well, no offense. But I kind of hope so."

Martha gave an understanding nod and took a bite out of her pizza. She asked Iris if her anatomy was identical to her father's or whether Linda's genes had created any physiological variations. And then she asked her if she liked _Buffy the Vampire Slayer._

* * *

It had taken Alfred the better part of two years to get used to being hugged by Martha; he had not expected to have to endure the same excessive display of affection from her brother. By the time Clay arrived in Gotham City to deliver his personal congratulations to his future brother-in-law, Martha had made him aware that Alfred was much more Bruce's father than he was his butler and therefore, in Clay's mind, now a part of his own family.

"The part of the family that bakes the pies," he elaborated to Alfred as he unwrapped his gangly arms from the butler's bony frame.

"Thank you, Master Clay," Alfred said, in a tone of resigned forbearance. He aimed a "rescue me, please" glance in the direction of the living room where Bruce, it seemed to Clay, had appeared out of nowhere.

Bruce handled the hug Clay laid upon him somewhat more comfortably, but with enough reserve that the youngest Kent knew it would be his mission to get these Gothamites to loosen up.

"Thanks for coming," Bruce told him, after asking about his flight and the trip from the airport. "Now that we're going to be family, there's something I want to show you."

"_Cool_," said Clay, as Bruce touched a spot on the fireplace mantelpiece and it swung back to reveal a stony staircase. Bruce lifted his chin toward the opening, indicating that Clay should head down the narrow steps.

Clay hesitated, "You've got some sort of souped-up rumpus room down there? With a custom pool table and all that other rich-guy stuff?"

"Kind of," Bruce said. He gestured again for Clay to start down the steps.

The staircase was clammy, dark and more than a little creepy. Clay imagined he could hear his footsteps echoing against the stone, even though he was wearing rubber soles. As he continued to descend, with Bruce immediately behind him, the passageway became colder and, it seemed to Clay, narrower. About halfway down, he turned uneasily toward Bruce and asked, "You aren't going to lock me in some sort of freaky catacombs, are you?"

"Your sister wouldn't like that," Bruce said mildly.

"It's a wine cellar?" Clay asked doubtfully, as Bruce waved him down the stairs.

It was so dark at the bottom of the steps that Clay nearly walked face-first into what appeared to be a slate wall. Bruce reached past the younger man's head to press his fingers against a sensor plate and a door rumbled open. Clay stepped into the muted light and blinked hard. They were in some sort of cave and he was pretty sure there were… things moving around on the far ceiling. In front of him was an array of ultra-high tech computers. And beyond them was the –

Bruce gave his shoulder a little push and Clay stumbled forward.

Beyond them was the _Batmobile_.

Clay spun around to gawk at his future brother-in-law.

"_Batman keeps his stuff here_?" he asked excitedly.

Bruce gave him a quizzical squint and angled his head around Clay's skinny shoulders. Martha stepped out from the shadows behind him, her arms crossed over a pink spaghetti-strap tank top.

"Wet your pants yet, Clay?" she asked.

Clay looked from his sister to Bruce and his eyes ballooned comically. As Martha started to laugh, her brother worked his jaw a few times, found his throat was too dry to produce sound and forced a few ragged swallows.

"Does _Dad_ know about this?" he rasped, shivering when Bruce's face darkened.

"That would be why he's been… kinda unhappy," Martha told him as Clay's gaze traveled the length of her fiancé's powerful body with new understanding before returning to meet his dark blue eyes.

"Can I have a ride in the Batmobile?" Clay asked.

Bruce grinned. "Maybe." He inclined his head toward the rest of the cave. "Want to take a look around before dinner?"

"Oh, God, yes," Clay said and directed a look of impressed surprise at Martha. "So you turn out to be a pretty cool sister. Marrying Batman."

"Gee, thanks," Martha said. "Too bad the coolness factor doesn't extend to brothers-in-law." Adding that she had a lot of work to do, Martha ordered the two men to bond and left them in the cave.

"Sometimes she reminds me of our mother," Clay remarked, cringing as he realized the things rustling above his head were bats. "Do those things go to the bathroom?"

"Every living thing goes to the bathroom," Bruce replied.

Clay ran a hand over his shaved head. "You got a hat?"

_

* * *

_

The time had come. He was here. Here to gather his army. Here to launch the first campaign. The Andes were so much more pleasant than the Arctic. He supposed Superman was proud of the defenses he had devised to hide away his Fortress.

It took him a long time – three or four minutes at least – to neutralize the illusions, obstructions, alarms and weaponry the falsely named Man of Steel had erected to protect his stronghold. He noted with derisive amusement that Superman was ever the creature of habit: The layout of this South American Fortress was nearly identical to the one he had kept in the Arctic. The sound of his footsteps echoed pleasantly as he strode through the mammoth citadel, with its blend of Terran and Kryptonian design. He did not hurry; Superman was occupied just now. By the time he realized his Fortress had been breached, it would be emptied of its greatest treasure.

He stepped into a hallway that led in two directions and remembered that in the citadel's previous incarnation, the room he sought had been situated on the right. As he turned in that direction, his eyes latched onto a glimmer from a surface so shiny it was virtually mirror-like. Superman liked to keep things clean.

He moved toward the slightly curved sheet of steel – a hatch of sorts – and inspected his reflection. It had been a while since he had taken a good look at himself. His fingers skimmed the thickened seam that wound unevenly around his neck. He had been too absorbed with his other upgrades to concern himself with the cosmetic aspects of reattaching his head. It could wait. He would destroy the Justice League first, then conquer the Earth's other superhumans. Finally, he would do what he had set out to do almost four decades earlier: take over this little blue world. And punish if for causing him so much trouble.

With that satisfying thought, Brainiac strode through the corridors of Superman's Fortress to throw open the virtual gates of the Phantom Zone.

* * *

Midori and Roy Harper were married in a small chapel in Deer Valley's only hotel, a bucolic white inn trimmed in pale greens and yellows that set off the bride's radiant complexion.

The ceremony was casually intimate, with a spirituality that reflected Roy's Navajo upbringing and Midori's wholehearted passion for her adopted planet. Everyone agreed that the most moving part of the service took place when Midori, paralyzed with emotion and stage fright, became unable to read the vows she had spent nearly a month composing. With a lopsided grin, Roy had eased the handwritten printout from her shaking hands and read them aloud to himself while his bride nodded vigorously.

While the hotel could not have lodged more than half of the three dozen guests who attended the wedding – oddly, many of them did not seem to need a place to stay – the inn's banquet hall was the unofficial square-dancing hub of the country. There was plenty of room for the reception. Six wagon-wheel shaped tables had been positioned in a semi-circle around an abbreviated dance floor. Each table held up to ten people. The bride and groom placed themselves with Lian, all five Wests and Dick and Kory. The other seating arrangements had gotten a little sticky.

Roy had called Bruce a few days before the wedding to ask where he wanted to be seated. Ordinarily, Roy would have placed him next to Martha without a second thought. But if he didn't seat Martha with the rest of the Kents…, well, Clark….

After a long moment of deliberation, Bruce had said, "Put me next to Martha. Wherever you're putting her parents."

Not only had Roy complied; he had apparently designated the table a high tension zone: Tim and Kia – who could not be positioned anywhere near Lian – were also seated there. Bruce was somewhat grateful for their presence – although he could not be sure how the Drakes and the Kents might interact. Clark knew that Tim was Robin; Tim was aware only that the big reporter was Martha's father. They had not seen each other since Bruce had put himself in the hospital.

"Does he like you now?" Tim asked, as he and Bruce found their table assignments on a small desk just outside the banquet hall. On Bruce's bleak look, Tim crushed the small, tented seating card in his hand. "I knew we shouldn't have come."

Martha joined them, looking lovely, Tim told her, in a clingy knee-length daffodil bridesmaid's dress. He seemed to mean this. Martha smiled gratefully and reached for Bruce's hand.

Tim left them to find his wife and Bruce glanced down at his hand where it joined Martha's. "Your father's inside…"

"I don't care," Martha said. "My mother's about to kill him."

Sensing that he would be unable to avoid Bruce at the reception, Clark had argued that he should not attend it: the wedding had been kept somewhat under wraps, but by its very nature, hundreds of people were aware that two members of the Justice League were marrying and that their colleagues and friends would be there to witness it. With so much of the costumed crimefighting community concentrated in one remote place, he claimed, the rest of the world would be unprotected.

Lois had been ready for this argument. The Outsiders and the Titans were on alert for the duration of the wedding, she contended, along with superhero teams and individuals from a dozen other nations. Roy had made a lot of friends, and even more allies, over the years. And as a wedding present for his teammates, Gren had called in a handful of Green Lanterns. They would patrol the earth until the Harpers left for their honeymoon the next morning. Clark was going to the damn wedding and the damn reception, Lois told him. He was going to dance with her. And he was going to talk to Bruce, who had proven, whatever they might have originally believed about his intentions, that he loved their daughter.

"I'm glad your mother's on our side," Bruce said, as Martha relayed Lois' account of the conversation. He craned his head toward their table, where Clark sat dolefully staring into a plate of salad. Roy had assigned the group the table closest to the exit, presumably to encourage its occupants to take any arguments outside.

"She's on my dad's side, too," Martha said. "She's sick of watching him torture himself."

They lingered at the buffet until everyone else at their table was seated, taking their places quickly as Wally started banging a spoon against his water glass to get everyone's attention.

"It took three of Roy's weddings for me to be able to do that without breaking the glass," he announced and everybody laughed. His "best man's toast" was entertaining and poignant. They, too, had improved with practice. Lian's speech was less polished and peppered with tears, but when she introduced a beaming Midori as her new mom, everybody applauded.

The tension level at their table, which escalated the moment Martha and Bruce slid into a pair of seats between Clay and Tim, grew even higher during Lian's maudlin tribute to her father and his new wife. Tim and Kia spent the entire speech staring stoically into the floral table arrangement.

As her husband started grimly buttering a roll, Kia attempted to relieve the stress by asking Lois how she and Clark knew the Harpers.

"We've both interviewed Roy a lot over the years," Lois said smoothly. "We always had to feed him. It got less expensive to have him over for dinner and we ended up getting social."

Kia turned to Martha. "And that's how you ended up being the Justice League doctor?"

Martha nodded. "Superman put in a good word for me, too."

"He's not here," Kia noted, looking around the room in disappointment.

"No," Lois said impassively, as Clark glumly handed Kia the circulating basket of dinner rolls. "His responsibilities don't allow him the time to enjoy these sorts of occasions. I don't know how he does it, actually."

* * *

If there was a technological key of sorts that would open the Phantom Zone, Superman hadn't left it lying around; Brainiac would grant him credit for taking this minimal precaution. But the modified projector Superwoman had used on the Joker was resting on a crystal pillar just meters away from the gateway to the other-dimensional prison. Brainiac saw murky figures gathering near the portal. He could feel their impatience as he tinkered with the projector, reversing the necessary fields. It would be better this way, he thought, as he resealed the cover plate. Releasing hundreds of Kryptonian into a world where they would quickly manifest Superman's powers had never seemed like an optimal plan. They would be too hard to control. Using the projector, he could hand-pick his forces. It wouldn't take more than a couple dozen Kryptonians to form an army.

But first he would liberate the least powerful among them. If the projector malfunctioned, he could always recalibrate it, but Brainiac didn't want to lose a valuable soldier in the process. He took aim through the portal at a tall, scrawny man with wild green hair and an eternal leer. The figure vanished from the waiting crowd of ghostly prisoners, materializing in front of Brainiac seconds later. He hadn't used his voice in more than a year, but it didn't take him long to find it.

"Oh, Brainy," the Joker said. "You didn't forget me."

Brainiac felt no compulsion to reply; he had previously endured this sort of social interaction only because it seemed necessary in his dealings with humans. He could not be bothered now; the task at hand required all of his concentration. He aimed the gun again toward the cluster of prisoners now inflamed at the prospect of liberation. With every squeeze of the trigger, a Kryptonian convict materialized before him, each using his first seconds of freedom to touch a face or a chest suddenly made substantial.

He could see the power surging through each of them as they tested voices unused for decades, their eyes gleaming with a mix of disbelief and a hunger for vengeance. He selected a final recruit, a statuesque woman, then tossed the projector onto the floor and nodded to a thick-bodied, middle-aged man who crushed the device under a heavy boot.

"Thank you," Brainiac said. He extended an arm to the man, who examined it with something close to disdain. But Brainiac had been offering neither alliance nor friendship. A thick stream of green liquid jetted from the Coluan's metallic palm and the man fell howling to the floor.

His death was punctuated with the retching sounds of those who had been standing close to him. Brainiac's eyes swept the roomful of abruptly ailing Kryptonians, then hoisted the dead man over his shoulder and carried him out to a nearby refuse chute.

"I hope I've made my point," he said as he returned to the center of the room. "You're all very powerful; I'm more powerful. Follow me and your rewards will be infinite. Defy me and you'll find yourself gargling liquid kryptonite. I'm not a big believer in middle ground."

"That was _Jax-Ur_," one of the younger escapees said numbly.

"Mourn him later, if he was important to you," Brainiac said dispassionately. "There's no time now. We're late for a wedding."

* * *

As soon as the traditional dance between bride and groom ended, Lois dragged her husband onto the ballroom floor. She did this despite a frequently vocalized aversion to country-western ballads. The tension at their table was beyond what she could bear.

Clay slumped against his chair. "Oh my God," he said. "That big elephant in the room – I think it's been sitting on my chest."

"Quiet," Martha said softly. She looked at Bruce, who had barely touched his food, then over at Tim, who was examining his mentor's expressionless face with concern. Kia had already fled the table, having waylaid Kory halfway to the dessert bar and dragged her into a corner.

Martha reached for Bruce's wrist, turning it so she could read his watch. The reception would be over in two hours. She wanted them to be happy hours. She wanted to dance with Bruce and giggle with Lian and catch up with a few people she hadn't seen in years. And there was only one way Martha could think of to make that happen.

"I'll be right back," she said to Bruce. Then she walked over to her parents as they moved across the dance floor and told her mother she was cutting in.

* * *

Most of the wedding guests were oblivious to the excruciating dynamics overshadowing the table at the far end of the banquet hall; Meera was not one of them. Waves of anxiety came crashing over her from where she sat with Emma and Gren on the other side of the large room. She found herself extraordinarily distracted. It wasn't until Emma patted her on her arm that she realized that Gren had been talking to her.

"Gren just asked you to dance," Emma said. "Where are you?"

"Sorry," Meera said. She shut her eyes, inhaled slowly and threw up a mental shield to protect herself from the rampant tension radiating from the Kents and Bruce Wayne. It closed her off from vicariously enjoying the bride and groom's exuberant happiness, but she could still do that like a normal person, by merely looking at their glowing faces. Extending her hand to Gren with a grin, she asked. "Who leads?"

* * *

"I want the little tramp who did this to me," the Joker roared into wind as he clutched Brainiac's slippery metal shoulders.

"No," Brainiac said, slightly adjusting the thrusters of the built-in rocket boots that were hurtling them toward western Colorado. He glanced behind him and saw with satisfaction that the cadre of Kryptonians he'd picked for this stage of the mission was winging him on either side. "You can have Batman. I'm going to kill Superman's daughter right in front of him. Then I'll kill him. And then the bride."

* * *

As soon as she saw what Martha was up to, Lois hurried over to the DJ and had him play the mushiest father/daughter song he could find. The maneuver was lost on neither Clark nor Martha, which didn't stop it from having exactly the effect Lois had hoped for.

They spent the first half of the dance listening to the song, in which a father reminisced nostalgically about the times his daughter had cajoled him into participating in tea parties and playing princess. These activities were so utterly opposite of the experience Clark and Martha had enjoyed together when she was young that when his daughter started to laugh, Clark could not hold back a snicker. But when the crooner confessed that as his little girl grew up and life became more complicated, he ended up loving her not less for the struggles they endured together, but more, Martha and her father became quiet again.

Martha took a steadying breath and looked into her father's troubled eyes. "Daddy, please," she said. "I can't be happy when you're miserable."

Clark squeezed his eyelids together, then opened them and started to answer. Martha never found out what he was going to say. His words were lost in the thunderous sound of a dozen Kryptonian bodies as they came smashing through the ceiling into the middle of the banquet hall.

And before anyone could react to this intrusion with so much as a scream, the super-powered invaders stepped forward to reveal Brainiac, whose feet were resting on the unconscious bodies of Meera Buhpathi and Grendel Gardner.

The Joker peeked out from behind his metallic green ally and it was immediately clear that a year and a half in the Phantom Zone had been anything but an insanity cure.

"Sorry for crashing," he said. "But I hear this is a good way to meet girls."

****

* * *

Next Chapter: _The Never-Ending Battle

* * *

_


	19. Chapter 19

* * *

Boundless gratitude to beta reader **_arg914_** and technical consultant, **_The Five Foot Ninja._**

* * *

When Roy and Midori Harper planned their wedding, they discussed vows, gowns, flower arrangements and a guest list. They worked out a buffet menu that would address their guests' varied dietary needs and debated over whether they wanted a band or a DJ. They agreed upon a small wedding party – a best man, maid of honor and two bridesmaids – and an afternoon ceremony in the middle of June. And then they put aside their do-it-yourself wedding planner and talked about weapons.

Had they truly believed their nuptials might be the focus of an attack, they would have settled for quick vows at the country courthouse. But as much as costumed heroes' crimefighting careers seemed to bleed into their personal lives, most of them had been allowed to marry in relative peace. Neither of Roy's other weddings had been disrupted; the Kents and the Wests had started their marriages without incident. It was only his mania for preparation that propelled Roy to take what he defensively characterized to his indulgent friends as basic precautions.

They had prepared neither for Brainiac, the Joker nor a cadre of renegade Kryptonians. But lives were saved in the first few minutes of the attack on his wedding because Arsenal, considered neither the Justice League's most powerful leader, nor its most brilliant, turned out, through his diligence and creativity, to be its best.

"I think you're looking for the O'Neill baptism next door," he told Brainiac grimly.

What Brainiac heard was a glib sort of bravado he considered one of humanity's most tiresome traits and he wasn't interested. Instead he nodded at Martha Kent, who was standing with her father to one side of the dance floor, and said, "The female in the yellow dress."

A trio of Kryptonians moved toward her, but the woman in yellow disappeared in an explosion of smoke before Brainiac completed the last half of the word "dress." Simultaneously, the ceiling lights erupted in a series of blinding pyrotechnics. In the seconds it took Brainiac's minions to clear away the smoke and fireworks with their newly imbued super-breath, several things had changed.

Martha Kent was gone, along with her father. Bruce Wayne – who had surreptitiously lobbed the initial smoke grenade upon hearing the code word "O'Neill" – had also disappeared. So had the bride.

Superman, on the other hand, had just joined the party. He hovered momentarily over the dance floor – where he was quickly joined by Wonder Woman and Koriand'r – then launched himself into the largest of the Phantom Zone escapees. Kory slammed into the Kryptonian next to him, while Wonder Woman went after Brainiac.

As Lois Lane and Clay Kent started snapping photos on their camera phones, the Flash, Bolt and Parker West began whizzing civilians out of the reception hall. Arsenal, who was ripping the tux from his torso to reveal his crimson tunic, and Quiver, in her maid of honor dress, pounded into the cloakroom where they had stored their weapons. From opposite sides of the room, Dick Grayson and Timothy Drake demonstrated that despite appreciably different personalities, their shared upbringing had taught them in some ways to think alike: Each sent uncorked bottles of champagne flying toward the Joker, who had been kicking savagely at Gren Gardner since noticing that Bruce had vanished. Both bottles sped toward the maniacal clown with dead-on accuracy, but with a sudden glare, a small Kryptonian woman sent the heavy flasks hurtling back where they came from. Near-perfect reflexes saw Dick and Tim flat against the ballroom floor milliseconds before the bottles whizzed over their heads.

"Telekinetic," muttered Tim, pulling Kia under the table with him. He looked around for one of the Wests.

* * *

Lois had also crawled under a table and was raising her cell phone to her ear when a double beam of red heat vaporized the device, destroying what she was certain would have been prize-winning photographs. She was cursing furiously when the smell of her singed hair finally reached her and she realized with sudden alertness that her fingers were burned.

They were burned, but still there. Only one other person in the room understood more than Lois that a Phantom Zone escapee would not show restraint in an attack – if he could help it.

"They're not at full power!" she shouted. Among the fighters, Superman had already surmised this. He had spent a lifetime absorbing the rays of Earth's yellow sun. It would take a while for the escapees' power to match his own – but they were catching up. He didn't want his teammates underestimating them.

There was another explosion and suddenly Superwoman was snowballing through a wall with two Kryptonians who had apparently attempted to follow Brainiac's instructions to seize Martha. They were big men, each at least as strong as the woman they were battling – but for the last year and a half, she had been taking fighting lessons from Batman. In the chaotic jumble of fists, feet, heat vision, weapons, super-breath and the endless stream of projectiles sailing through the air, Superwoman scored the first solid win, knocking both escapees unconscious with Batman's trademark broom-sweep/twist kick combination. It was the first time she had actually pulled it off, but there was decidedly no time to celebrate. Brainiac had not come unarmed. He had converted his massive metallic body into an armory and had somehow bound Wonder Woman in an electric field of astounding intensity: The Amazon's eyes had rolled up into her skull and her body was convulsing with a force Superwoman was not sure the older woman could tolerate much longer. She slammed into Brainiac from behind, just as Gren, a few feet away from him, roused painfully to consciousness.

* * *

As soon as Parker shot out past the reception hall doors with Kia, Tim sprinted and dodged his way into the lobby, passing terrified hotel guests as he bounded up the splintering steps to the second floor. Dick, whose wife did not need his protection, was ahead of him, crashing through the door of the hotel room where they – and Bruce – had stowed their gear. Batman was halfway out the hotel window when they burst into the room, the hook of his grappling gun hugging the edge of the sill.

"I didn't see Martha anywhere," Tim told him, as he reached for the trousers of his fighting suit.

"I know where she is," Batman said, adding, "Midori and Blitz should be back with more weapons any time and the Titans and the Outsiders are overdue. They may be under attack. Let's try to move this fight to somewhere a little less populous. And be careful."

He disappeared before either one of them could respond.

"Where are the Wests taking the civilians?" Tim asked Dick as they hurriedly dressed.

"Out by some restaurant in the woods," Dick told him. "Roy went over the route with them last night. And again this morning." He gave a short laugh. "And we all told him he was paranoid."

Tim pressed his mask to his face. "Let's go."

Dick agreed, "We don't want to miss the last dance."

* * *

Arsenal heard his daughter cursing in frustration as they spread out around the ballroom, firing arrow after arrow in an attempt to back up their super-powered comrades. It was hard to hold your own when the bad guys were invulnerable – or seemingly so – and you were just a guy with some skills, he thought.

Not that that had ever stopped Batman. Arsenal watched with near-reverence as the Dark Knight dropped seemingly out of nowhere into the mass of mighty bodies, snapped a hard sidekick into the Joker's hip and rolled onto the ground near Meera. He was dragging her away, keeping as flat as he could to avoid a lethal blow from a stray Kryptonian hand or foot, when the Joker realized he had been hit. The criminal clown crashed to the floor, shrieking, just as the Flash and Bolt body-slammed the fugitive fighting next to him. The knocked-cold Kryptonian toppled onto the Joker, who seemed to go silent for a moment, before Arsenal saw his white-gloved fingers poking at the unconscious man's beefy shoulder.

_That sick bastard never dies_, Arsenal thought as he launched a hailstorm of explosive arrows to cover Batman, who almost had Meera under the closest table. His eyes swept a ballroom now emptied of civilians, except for a tuxedoed young woman – Roy recognized her as the server who fifteen minutes ago had congratulated him on his marriage – whose crumpled posture suggested that she was dead.

* * *

Gren's eyes fluttered through a haze of screaming red and he knew he had somehow awakened in the middle of a fight. He and Meera had been dancing… he thought there might have been an explosion… his head and ribs hurt… something was happening above him….

Instinctively, he ran a thumb across the face of his emerald ring and was filled with strength and clarity. His eyes snapped open just as a foot came plunging toward his face; Gren rolled to the side and threw up a curved shield of solid light. He was too mesmerized by the super-powered free-for-all above him to take notice of the heavy boot as it skidded down the side of his shield, but when its owner lost his footing and toppled to the floor beside him, Gren's eyes followed. The man scrambled quickly to his feet, leaving the view behind him clear. Gren saw Batman hauling Meera away from the melee. The Green Lantern could not be sure she was alive.

Although he had never given it a label, or even much of a thought, Meera was as close to a best friend as Gren had ever had and the sight of what he feared might be her murdered body filled him with fury. He thrust his fist upward and a wide arc of green light exploded into the center of the brawl, sending bodies scattering across the ballroom. Only Superman had the reflexes to dodge the blast; he managed to snatch a woozy Wonder Woman by the wrist and pull her from the fray. Everyone else went slamming into walls, tables and chandeliers. Except for the Harpers, Nightwing and Robin – who needed a moment or two more to recover – the combatants were back on their feet on the short side of a second.

As Gren leapt up, he heard a deep cracking sound above him and saw that that room, unable to tolerate the abuse exacted upon it by the exceptionally rambunctious wedding party, was collapsing. It was likely, then, that the claims adjuster would have declared the inn a total loss even before Kurdoon, Kyle Rayner and three other members of the Green Lantern Corps came crashing through the ceiling.

* * *

Midori wobbled for a dizzy moment as Blitz deposited her on the floor of her lab at the League's upstate New York headquarters. Iris lacked her father's finesse at passenger transport and even the few rides Wally had given Midori had left her stomach quaking. Resolve and adrenaline steadied her instantly and she began stripping off her bridal gown.

"Are you as fast as your father?" she asked Blitz, who anxiously scanned the room full of half-assembled weapons as though trying to determine if there was something useful she could find there.

"I'm faster," Blitz replied with a trace of indignation. She watched Midori tug on a tight pair of combat coveralls. "He's old."

Midori nodded absently as she jerked her rocket boots over bare feet and dragged Blitz to a high-speed elevator that dropped them several hundred feet underground. The door snapped open directly in front of a formidable-looking lead vault.

"What's in there?" Blitz asked as Midori slapped her hand against a touch plate and allowed stream of blue light scan her right eye.

"We never could be sure Cadmus would be able to hold Doomsday," explained Midori, as the vault door slid back and she raced inside, stuffing a utility pouch with dozens of what Blitz recognized as expandable force field grenades.

"You think _Doomsday's_ out there, too?" she asked, embarrassed by the heightened pitch of her voice.

Midori zipped up the bag. "No," she said. "But his derivation is Kryptonian. These force fields are laced with kryptonite."

Feeling for the first time like they had a chance, Blitz nodded and asked, "Ready to go, then?"

Midori's eyes went cold. "Not yet," she said. "These weapons won't work against Brainiac. But I've got something that will."

* * *

By the time Brainiac and his Kryptonian minions landed in the middle of the reception hall, he had long abandoned his organic body, but he had not entirely jettisoned what could have been loosely described as his humanity. What remained, besides a distorted sense of creativity, was a brilliance overshadowed by unparalleled ego – and, since Meera's attack on him more than a year earlier – madness.

His insanity was more subtle than the Joker's, manifesting itself in near-delusional overconfidence and an amplified hunger for blood. While the Joker had always delighted in inflicting pain, to Brainiac it had always been a means to an end – until now.

This combination of megalomania and madness had inspired his fantasy of putting a quick end to the incessantly lucky cretins who had caused the excruciating tearing away of his mind. He had envisioned them dead on the ballroom floor. His certainty of that vision had left him without a back-up plan, but Brainiac had always been good at improvising.

Sunlight would vastly increase the rate at which his small army absorbed power. They were not quite supermen yet, Brainiac told himself. But he could fix that.

Meanwhile the arrival of five additional Green Lanterns necessitated an odious but unavoidable tactic.

"Redeploy," Brainiac growled. And as the squad of criminal Kryptonians covered him, bombarding League and Lanterns with a salvo of heat-vision, super-breath and ever-increasing strength, he rocketed out through the collapsing roof.

* * *

The dozen super-powered fugitives followed Brainiac with little difficulty; Roy had waved back his fliers as soon as he recognized the retreat. He wanted to continue the fight without more civilian deaths. That meant going after the villains quickly and redirecting the course of their escape, but with Meera out of action, he needed to take a moment to personally relay his instructions.

"How is she?" he asked Batman.

"Not dead," Batman replied. "She needs a hospital."

Roy nodded at a dazed Parker, whose face and dress shirt were streaked with someone else's blood. "You take her, Park."

He nodded sightlessly. "Then I'm heading after you guys."

Wally grasped him by the shoulders. "No," he said. "A hero's most important job isn't fighting bad guys. It's protecting the innocent. You take care of Meera and then scout around for more wounded. And then you keep watch over your mother and the other guests we left at the café."

Parker licked his cracked lips and disappeared with Meera. As the Flash turned back to Arsenal, Superman said, "There's a second Phantom Zone projector. In the Fortress. Lois knows where it is."

Arsenal looked at the Flash, who nodded. "I'll catch up with you guys," he said. He shot towards the restaurant, hoping he'd catch Lois before she climbed aboard the helicopter he was sure that she'd ordered to cover the impending battle.

Starfire flew off with Nightwing to check on the Outsiders and Roy asked one of the Lanterns to back up a Pan-African team that had volunteered to patrol along the West Coast. He sent Kyle ahead to keep an eye on Brainiac's crew, knowing he could communicate back to them through Gren.

"We'll accompany you," Kurdoon squeaked, gesturing toward his squad of two with a gelatinous purple limb.

"No," Roy said. "Find the Titans. They're under attack or they'd be here by now and they're the freshest bunch of kids the Tower has seen in years."

Kurdoon's head shuddered – his version of a nod – and his team soared toward the coordinates Arsenal provided, just as Blitz skidded into the middle of the ballroom with a breathless Midori.

"Here." Roy's bride tossed a pair of rocket boots toward the bedraggled Quiver, who had spent most of the ballroom battle scrapping in a pair of high-heeled dress shoes. As Blitz distributed the earpieces that would keep them in rudimentary contact, Midori passed out the kryptonite force field grenades to everyone but Superman and Superwoman and cautioned everyone not to use them too close to their susceptible teammates.

Superwoman started to speak and Roy said sharply, "Don't ask for one."

"I wasn't going to," she replied. "Just no one hesitate to use one near me. Kryptonite in solid form doesn't affect me as badly and –" her eyes darted toward Batman. "I've got some pretty good cover."

Superman said firmly, "No one hesitates to use them. We have no idea how many prisoners Brainiac let out. We can't afford –"

"– to lose two of our key fighters," Arsenal cut in. "So save the nobility for another time."

"Shit," Gren said suddenly. "Rayner says they've split up."

Arsenal cursed. "Where are they headed?"

Brainiac and most of the Kryptonians were flying high over the Colorado Rockies, Gren told him. A smaller group of escapees – including the Joker – were headed southwest.

"Let's go," Arsenal said. "Try to keep in touch with each other." The earpieces were a poor substitute for Meera. He looked at Midori. "You put out a distress call?"

She nodded. "Before we left headquarters. I called everyone."

Arsenal split them into two teams, with Batman, Superwoman, Gren and Blitz in pursuit of the Joker's contingent, while the rest of them – Bolt and a recovered Wonder Woman included – went after Brainiac and the majority of the Kryptonians.

"Good luck," Roy told them. "Take care of each other."

* * *

Superman shot past his teammates as soon as he cleared the ruins of the inn; Midori and Roy hitched rides with Wonder Woman. Bolt, who already had Robin, grabbed Quiver before she could argue: her rocket boots were meant for hovering, not hurtling.

By the time they'd caught up to Superman and Kyle, the heroes' fight had already started to go south. The bright sun – magnified by the thin atmosphere and the light-reflecting snow-topped mountains of the Rockies – had boosted the Kryptonians' power. Superman was still stronger – but he couldn't fight eight of them alone – or even with the help of one of the more powerful Green Lanterns.

Quiver shrugged free of Bolt the moment she saw the aerial mêlée, reached behind her back for a grenade launcher and ignited her rocket boots. One of the fugitives had managed to lock a forearm around Superman's throat from behind. The Man of Steel threw him forward over his right shoulder, while ramming an elbow into the jaw of a second escapee and sending a burst of heat vision into a third. None of it was effortless; Superman was already bleeding and his cheek was burned. Beside him, sweat dripping past his gray temples, Kyle was fighting off a duo of Kryptonians who were double-teaming him with alternating blasts of heat and cold. The Green Lantern fought with determined calm, but he was also injured – Quiver could see the trickle of blood oozing from one of his ears.

With an instinct fueled by rage – Quiver's default emotion in dire combat situations – she swung the handheld launcher at one of the Kryptonians attacking Kyle and released the kryptonite-impregnated force-field grenade. It was a dead hit to burly convict's chest. The projectile bounced off of him with a dull thud that made him smirk – until the invisible field unfolded around him and he started turning green.

Even had the escapees developed some sense of loyalty toward each other – and they hadn't – none of them could have caught their cohort without exposing themselves to Kryptonite poisoning as well. Brainiac might have caught him, but he had either taken cover or fled. The trapped man plunged, screaming, several hundred feet into an icy mountain summit.

The small woman who had deflected the pair of champagne bottles loomed suddenly out from a thick white cloud. With a stern squint at Quiver, she opened her palm, revealing a handful of cutlery she must have grabbed at the reception. A trio of sharp knives shot toward the airborne archer.

Lian was wearing a personal force field, but she nonetheless pivoted swiftly away from the steely projectiles, avoiding the first two. The third, a steak knife, plunged into her left inner bicep, burying itself into her flesh up to its wooden hilt. With an angry cry, she tugged at the imbedded knife, momentarily losing the concentration she needed to stay aloft.

Bolt caught her as she fell, but by then the telekinetic – had he the time, Superman would have told them her name was Nadira, one of the Zone's more notorious felons – had uprooted a medium-sized tree from the side of one of the mountains and had sent it speeding after them.

They lived because Nadira's telekinesis – unlike her growing superpowers – was not enhanced by the yellow sun. Had she pitched the knives – or the tree – with her hands, Quiver would have died on her father's wedding day. Old habits, luckily, were harder to kill than Kryptonians.

"My force field's down," Quiver announced as she scoured the skies for Brainiac. She pushed a button on the belt she had wrapped around her tattered maid of honor dress and was relieved to see the field re-activate.

A few seconds later she heard her father's voice. "Mine was, too. Just a stutter. Reboot it."

"You think Brainiac can disrupt the kryptonite fields?" she asked, looking around. She could see neither the Coluan supervillain, nor her father, Midori or Wonder Woman.

There was a pause. She supposed he was consulting with Midori, but when she heard her father's voice again, it was slightly drowned out by the sounds of combat and weighted down with pain. "Different frequency. Hey…."

"Yeah?" she asked tersely, as Robin launched a grenade at a hulking Kryptonian, then dive-rolled behind a boulder that exploded a second later.

"Our no-killing rule," Roy said. "I'm not gonna be a stickler about that today."

* * *

Batman had come to a similar decision. "I'll take care of the Joker," he shouted over the torrent of wind the rushed across them as he and Superwoman followed Gren across the Arizona border.

Understanding exactly what he was saying, Superwoman gave her lover a grim thumbs-up sign as Gren reported that the fugitives had lodged themselves in a rocky pocket of the Grand Canyon.

"Tourists?" Batman asked tersely.

"It's a beautiful summer day," Gren replied. "What do you think?"

* * *

The Flash raced over the range of mountains, a Phantom Zone projector – this one older and bulkier than the model Brainiac had used to liberate his super-powered foot soldiers – tucked under his arm. It was Superman's to use – his familiarity with the device and his aerial mobility made him the best choice. Wally could see himself accidentally sending one of his teammates – or even himself – into the Zone. He wanted the thing out of his hands as soon as possible.

It was a hell of a time finding the others, though – Roy had tried twice to give him a decent fix on their position, but it seemed to keep changing. From what Wally could gather, Robin had downed a second Kryptonian, but the other six were becoming stronger. Soon their power would equal Superman's. Brains over brawn was a big theme in Arsenal's training regime, but Wally had seen brawn kick brains' ass enough times to know that two dozen Kryptonians at full power meant at the very best a whole lot of innocent deaths – and not improbably, the end of the world.

He was buoyed by the knowledge that Brainiac had not freed all of the Zone's thousands of prisoners. Enraged at having been left behind, a handful of inmates had fallen easily for Lois' lies of a lighter sentence in exchange for information and had given her a fairly consistent estimate of the number of felons who had escaped.

The Flash looked into the sky and saw him – the blue of his costume and the red of a torn, but still billowing cape setting him apart from all of the others.

"Superman," he said. "I've got it."

"Be… right there." Even through the static, the Flash could hear the exertion in the Man of Steel's determined voice.

He watched as Superman, seemingly fueled by the hope the arrival of the projector had brought – whipped a heel kick against the side of a beefy escapee's head. The felon had presumed himself strong enough to take on Earth's greatest hero – and he had fallen considerably short. The Flash studied the fugitive's limp body as he plummeted into the mountain range below him and guessed they wouldn't be wasting a kryptonite force field on him.

Superman was taking the projector from him before the Flash realized he was there. "Thanks, Wally."

The Flash nodded. "I'm gonna go hit the Grand Canyon. There's a bunch of tourists in the cross-fire and Iris is having trouble moving them alone."

Only Superman could have grabbed his arm quickly enough to stop him. "Is she all right?" he asked, not meaning Blitz.

Lois was fine, Wally told him. Other than being incensed, he added, that Linda had commandeered her spot on the news helicopter, owing to Clay's reluctance to get into a fistfight with a middle-aged woman.

A grin pulled at one side of Superman's battered face. "Thanks." Then, anchoring the Phantom Zone projector securely against his side, he launched himself into the air.

_

* * *

_

_Three down,_ Arsenal thought, wiping the blood away from his mouth as he eyed the skies for another clear shot at one of the fugitives battling Wonder Woman. From what she could see, the remaining Kryptonians were now as strong as the Amazonian princess, who was holding on in her fight with two of them through sheer skill and grit.

He tried not to think about Midori, who had seen Brainiac veer off toward a range of mountains and had rocketed after him alone. Roy had tried to stop her, but either her earpiece wasn't working or…. He knew her earpiece was working.

A blast of heat vision sent the tree he had been using for cover in flames and he dive-rolled across the rocky, snow-covered ground in hopes of getting a shot at his attacker. Still rolling, he aimed at a statuesque Kryptonian woman – who reminded him somewhat of an older, huskier Superwoman – and fired. He missed, the grenade falling a few meters short. He spun back in the opposite direction as the woman hammered back with a staccato barrage of heat blasts.

Missing Arsenal prompted the woman to move closer. A single beam of fire glanced his left thigh and he briefly squeezed his eyes together in pain. When he opened them, he saw that the woman who had been attacking him was startled, green-tinged and falling. Robin stood a few feet away, grenade launcher still smoking, as his eyes scoured the sky.

"Thanks," Roy said.

Wiping sweat and grime from his face with the back of a gloved hand, Robin replied, "Cherry-picking isn't going to cut it. There's too many –"

_Roy?_

For a moment he thought he'd just imagined it, the gently accented French-Canadian voice with its barely detectable Indian inflection. But then it sounded in his head again.

_Aren't you supposed to be getting married today? _

"Meera," Arsenal said, as though the name was a discovery, or even a prayer. He looked at Tim, who was giving him a puzzled stare and said, "This fight just got turned around."

* * *

When Brainiac signaled his retreat from the overrun reception hall, the Joker had barely managed to grab onto the nearest fleeing Kryptonian fugitive. The deranged clown's importance to his mechanical Coluan counterpart had faded in the powerful light of his new army. The Joker correctly suspected that the escapees did not realize this and had ordered four of them to break away from the others. He did not want to take over the world. He just wanted to end Batman's as crushingly as possible. Playtime with the caped crusader wasn't fun anymore.

The demented jester knew Batman would pursue him – and from what he had observed over the year through the dimensional window of the Phantom Zone, the Joker knew that Superwoman would be there, too, fighting by her lover's side. Her death, before Batman's eyes, he instructed the super-powered fugitives, was their first priority. Then he would take care of a devastated Batman himself, he added, patting the alien weapon he had stolen from the Fortress and had slung across his gangling frame.

The sight of hikers and a caravan of mule-mounted sightseers delighted the Joker. Tourists always made such a lovely distraction.

Gripping the shoulder of his Kryptonian bearer with one hand, he lifted the futuristic-looking laser rifle and aimed at a little blonde girl who rode imperiously upon one of the smaller animals. _So precious_, he thought, as he squeezed the trigger.

* * *

As the Justice League battled across the Western skies, their allies were engaged in skirmishes with criminal Kryptonians across North America. The Outsiders had been waylaid by three of them above the Ohio Valley, while a British squad battled another pair over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Pan-African group, along with one of the Green Lanterns, had pushed a quartet of Kryptonians into the skies a few miles west of the Pacific Coast in an urgent attempt to keep them away from the heavily populated California beaches. While Jax-Ur lay decaying in a Fortress of Solitude waste receptacle, the final two Phantom Zone escapees went after the Teen Titans, whose East Coast patrol had brought them over the Maine-Canadian border.

The Titans were ably commanded by its youngest leader, Goldenboy, but the team's current mix of powers did not include a super-human of even Superwoman's strength and the sole magician among them was struggling to find a spell that would hold the pair of Kryptonians for more than a few minutes. As Kurdoon and the other Lanterns grew closer to the battle, they witnessed the escapees tossing the flaccid body of a costumed teen-aged boy between them.

Kurdoon's race was so peaceful that the Guardians who governed the Green Lanterns had thought twice before accepting Kyle Rayner's recommendation to recruit the gelatinous quintuped. He had proved himself ably over the decade. His use of skill over deadly force drew much admiration from his fellows, eventually earning him a promotion to squad leader. But in Kurdoon's still relatively unknown culture, the depth of one belief had been long misconstrued. It was not philosophical, religious or even moral. It was primal: Children were sacred. To harm one even accidentally could inspire suicide among his people. Even from a distance, Kurdoon could see that the Kryptonians had murdered this boy they now threw about like a rag doll.

A force of will that rivaled Hal Jordan's at its strongest flooded Kurdoon and he hurled himself at the child-killers with a burning fury. His fellow Lanterns strained to catch up with him, but found it impossible. In the end, they didn't have to.

* * *

The Joker had thought the crimson blur was his imagination – perhaps the effects of looking into the sun as he rode upon the Kryptonian's broad back. But while the little girl he had shot at no longer sat on the mule's sagging saddle, she wasn't smeared against the trail's rock wall either and he knew he had been outrun by the Flash.

In fact, it had been Blitz. Faster than her father, though not yet quite as skilled, she had managed to snatch away the whole family of riders before the energy bolt from the Joker's Kryptonian weapon ended the life of its smallest member. The Joker had little time to vent over this interference; a wide blast of solid green light swept across him from behind, knocking him from the back of his high-flying ride and into the canyon. For anyone else, it would have been a fatal fall, but the Joker, as Arsenal had observed earlier, just wouldn't die. As he tumbled downward, he reached toward a stony protrusion on the lip of the chasm and grabbed fast. He waited expectantly for his carrier to swoop back and rescue him, but all four of the airborne fugitives were now under attack by the combined forces of the Green Lantern, Superwoman and the Flash.

* * *

She knew that despite her earlier assurances, Batman wouldn't fire a force-field grenade at one of the Kryptonians if she was close enough to get caught in it, so Superwoman drove her opponent into range, then thrust the villain away with a double heel kick to the chest. There was a _thwap_ as the grenade shot into the air and erupted against the felon's shoulder blades. A second later he was spiraling into the canyon.

_That's one_, Superwoman thought, searching the walls of the basin for the Wests. The Flash and Blitz had tackled one of the escapees together and were using a combination of distraction and strength-enhancing velocity to pin him against a canyon wall. They had achieved this largely because the fugitive was slow witted and unused to his power, but he had still injured both of them and as Blitz clawed for the grenade at her waist, the villain smacked it away. Superwoman soared after it without thinking, snatched the weapon seconds before it exploded wastefully against the ground, and after shouting a warning to her teammates, lobbed it hard at the Kryptonian criminal. His complexion was fairer than the felon Batman had bagged; he turned a slightly different shade of green as he slumped against the canyon wall.

"Don't tell Batman," Superwoman said sheepishly, knowing she would probably make the confession herself later. Ignoring an itch in her throwing hand, she produced a bandage to wrap around a profusely bleeding gash in Blitz's forehead.

_Flash. _

The three of them started as they realized Roy's voice was not coming from their earpieces.

_Get Meera from the hospital and bring her here. Now._

"You got it," the Flash said. He impulsively kissed both women's cheeks before rocketing back to Deer Valley.

"You're OK?" Martha asked, addressing her question to the telepath and Iris simultaneously.

As Iris nodded grimly, Meera replied, _OK enough. Your father has the Phantom Zone projector. But he's having trouble getting a clear shot. These guys are pretty strong now_.

"Then you help him," Superwoman said. "And remember what we talked about, Meera. On the bridge."

_I will, sweetie_, Meera replied. _You just hang in there._

* * *

Arsenal and Robin had managed to re-join Quiver and Bolt, both of whom were alternately trying to distract the Kryptonians and fire at them. Bolt's aim was appallingly bad; he had already wasted two grenades when Quiver had finally snapped at him to stop shooting.

Wonder Woman and Kyle were tangling with a pair of escapees; their proximity to the felons made it impossible for Superman to fire the Phantom Zone projector at the escapees. He had been pursuing the third male in the group when Nadira had attempted to use her telekinesis to wrest the device from his hands.

His grip was stronger than her mental abilities, but she was interfering badly with his ability to aim. Her cohort, realizing he was temporarily out of the Man of Steel's sights, had veered around to aim a blast of super-breath at the projector.

Quiver had rocketed up to launch a grenade at Nadira, but she was chased back by a round of erratically aimed heat vision. The strength of the Kryptonians' super-senses had intensified enough to have rendered the League's personal force-fields worthless. Bolt, his eyes locked on the telekinetic, groped around on the ground for a rock, wound up at near-invisible super speed and then proved his pitch was considerably better than his ability to fire a weapon. The rock bounced off the back of Nadira's skull, causing the second of distraction Superman needed to fire the projector.

She seemed to melt into the air. In a fraction of a second, Superman shifted a meter in the air and re-aimed the projector. Nadira's partner had already started to retreat when the ray paralyzed him and he, too, faded away.

The two remaining Kryptonian felons, now outnumbered, fled into the mountains, with Kyle and Wonder Woman in close pursuit. Superman dropped beside Arsenal and the others as the Flash blurred toward them with a hospital-gown clad Meera in his arms.

"How are the other teams doing?" Superman asked her.

The Titans' battle was over, Meera reported, pulling her thin bathrobe self-consciously around her. She elected not to reveal the loss the young team had suffered, instead stating that Goldenboy had directed his crew – and two of the Green Lanterns – to the Ohio Valley, where the Outsiders continued to struggle against two Kryptonian villains.

The third one had attempted to murder Nightwing, slicing off the tip of his ear – and a wavy lock of black hair – with a stream of heat vision. Starfire had killed him with her bare hands.

"Send the third Lantern to help the Brits," Arsenal told Meera.

The telepath shook her head. "Can't."

She didn't have to elaborate. "Then you go," he said dully. "Help the Brits, then all of you go back up the Africans. But first –" Arsenal gave her a pleading look. "Can you locate Brainiac?"

Meera cocked her head for a moment, than smiled bitterly. "I can't sense his thoughts – he's shielded them. But there's a sentient entity moving through the mountains about two miles to the northeast. It's like a blank spot. It's him."

"And where's Midori?" Roy asked.

"On his tail," Meera said. She searched his eyes. "Let me go after him, Roy."

"Roy wants you to," he replied. "Arsenal can't let you. But be ready to high-tail it back here on my signal."

He nodded at the Flash, who grabbed Meera and shot off.

"The rest of us go after Brainiac," Superman said. "The fugitives Diana and Kyle are chasing are probably heading for him right now. They probably think he can get them out of this."

Roy turned to Bolt. "Got any grenades left?"

The Flash's older son nodded. "A few."

"Get them to the Outsiders," he said. "Starfire and Nightwing left before Midori got back with them."

Arsenal turned to the others as Bolt disappeared.

"Let's move," he said. "My wife wants to kill that metallic bastard and that's fine with me. But if he fucking touches her…."

"Then let's go," Superman told him. "Let's finish this."

* * *

Gren coughed a piece of molar out through bloody lips and pushed himself up from the canyon floor. He was sure the punch the escapee had landed had broken his jaw in spite of the solid light force field Gren had been holding between them. That meant the fugitive was at Superman's strength, or near enough that the difference wouldn't matter to anyone short of the Man of Steel himself. Gren had been buoyed by the news that Meera was alive and fighting and that nearly every superhero in the world was heading toward the teams that had been attacked, but he, Superwoman, Batman and Blitz seemed to be duking it out alone with these bastards alone.

He looked into the air and saw that the Kryptonians had turned their attention to Superwoman. She was fighting gamely, but she was obviously tired and now outmatched. The cover Batman was supplying with his arsenal of gadgets seemed worthless and Blitz, having cleared away the last of the tourists, was running under the tangle of airborne bodies helplessly clutching a kryptonite grenade.

Gren coughed again and felt blood and bile rise up in his throat. Then he threw himself into the air and heaved a barrage of energy bolts at the Kryptonians, praying he would not accidentally hit Martha, too.

* * *

As Superman had suspected, the escapees who had fled to avoid re-imprisonment in the Phantom Zone were heading in the direction that Meera had reported sensing Brainiac. Wonder Woman and the Kyle had intercepted them halfway down one of the mountains and found them impossibly stronger. Kyle had been injured badly in the ensuring skirmish, with a blow to the head rendering him unconscious. Arsenal ordered Wonder Woman to get him to the nearest hospital and then re-join the team as it searched for Brainiac.

"I shouldn't have sent Meera away," Roy said as he, Quiver and Robin trekked after Superman.

"You had to," Quiver told him. "The other teams didn't have the manpower."

"Now we don't either," he said, combing the skies for a sign of Brainiac, the fugitives or even Wonder Woman.

"Stop talking," Robin told them. "You're wasting energy."

* * *

As he swept through thatches of trees using what was mistakenly referred to as his x-ray vision, Superman tried to keep his mind free of distraction. The task was close to impossible: He could not help but worry about Martha and wonder which one of the Green Lanterns was dead. He suspected there had been other deaths as well; Meera's heartbeat had skipped when Arsenal had asked about the Titans. And if Midori tried to take on Brainiac herself…. Superman respected his Coluan teammate's courage and initiative, but he didn't see how she could survive that sort of confrontation.

_Superman_.

He lifted his head. "Yeah, Meera."

_Midori needs to talk to you._

* * *

It was typical, the Joker thought as he climbed through the cluster of spiky rocks. Bring in some dullards who could hoist a few rocks and fly and the artists were sent to the back of the class.

He eyed the battle above him and idly wondered if the alien weapon he found was strong enough to blow a hole in the bimbo hiding behind the hologram. He really wanted to see Bats blubbering over her bloody body before blowing him away. The Joker smiled in admiration of his impromptu alliteration. The poet, he thought, never goes on vacation.

He was going to have to settle for less, though, if the aerial strongmen didn't end Superwoman's life soon – and that obnoxious young Green Lantern, with his long hippy hair and his foul mouth, had been doing his best to prevent that. The Joker knew he had to hit Batman while he was preoccupied. It would all end the same, though, he reasoned, as he peeked around the boulder to where the Dark Knight was aiming a handheld rocket launcher of sorts at the cluster of airborne bodies. Superwoman would fall apart at the sight of her dead lover and Brainiac's big bullies would find her easy pickings then. The Joker lifted the laser rifle toward Batman and peered through its oddly designed crosshairs.

A shame, he thought, as his finger tightened around the smooth trigger. He would have loved to have hovered over Batman, delivering a taunting farewell as the cowled clod sucked down his last painful breath. But the Joker had seen this weapon work. He knew there would be nothing left of Batman to bid goodbye.

* * *

Had his wife not been missing and the threat of attack by super-powered criminals imminent, Arsenal would have found more relief in Meera's report that the Outsiders had used Bolt's grenades to capture the last of the Kryptonians they had been fighting. With her help, the British team had also bested the escapees they'd been battling. Arsenal was half-afraid to ask the telepath what she had done to the fugitives; instead he sent everyone who could still stand or fly to back up the African team. They had downed two of the four Kryptonians themselves, but had suffered serious injuries in doing so.

"But you and Wally come back here first," he said. "We've lost Kyle and I'm not sure what happened to Diana."

They had also lost contact with Superman, who had taken off a minute earlier without explanation. Arsenal had just started to ask Meera to get in touch with the Man of Steel when the pair of missing Kryptonian fugitives burst toward them from the surrounding woods.

Robin and Quiver hit the dirt before reaching for their weapons, but Arsenal stood his ground, spinning toward the closest escapee with his launcher outstretched. The Kryptonian blasted the weapon out of his hand. Roy hunched low to avoid the swooping felon, while reaching back for his bow as his teammates fired upon both attackers. Both shots missed. Arsenal attached a grenade to his favorite arrow, a heat-seeking projectile that would follow whatever it was fired at. He was pulling back on the bowstring when the fugitives spun around and saw him. Their double blast of heat vision didn't stop Roy from releasing the grenade – which hit his closest attacker in the stomach before enveloping him in kryptonite – but it did end Arsenal's fight. One fiery line of heat blazed through the yellowwood longbow, searing away Roy's right hand as he drew it back to seize another arrow. The second stream sliced through his ankle.

He heard his daughter's screams before he felt the pain. Then there was the sound of grenade launchers and Lian cursing and the oddly distorted vision of Wonder Woman plowing into the back of a Kryptonian fugitive who was already going green.

He felt warm hands on his face and heard the tear of clothing and sensed a tightening around his lower right arm and leg.

"Daddy," Lian cried. She pressed her forehead against his and Roy could feel the snow cool against his neck.

"I really liked that bow," he said dazedly, barely understanding his own words through lips that felt thick and wooden. Snow was seeping through the back of his costume now and Tim was shouting at Lian to contact "that telepath," and she was snapping back that she already had and that she'd called for a doctor and Roy's eyes rolled past their urgent voices to stare into Wonder Woman's horrified face.

"Have you seen Midori?" he asked. "Will you go get her?"

* * *

As her husband was releasing his last arrow, Midori was halfway through a one-woman firefight with Brainiac that had started seconds after she'd summoned Superman. She had found Brainiac on her own as he hovered above a patch of trees overlooking one of the range's tallest mountains. He had been monitoring his soldiers' battles through a view screen that rolled back into a compartment in his left forearm.

Midori knew better than to think she could take on the murderous genius alone; it had not occurred to her that she'd been lured into a trap.

She had believed herself well-hidden in a cluster of heavily needled evergreens. But as she crouched behind the thickest of them, eyes locked on the genocidal mastermind who had disgraced her homeworld, Brainiac – made madder from the losses he'd seen inflicted on his supposedly invincible Kryptonian army – had wheeled around and, with an outstretched arm, blasted away her cover of trees.

"My avenging little Coluan," he mocked as Midori pushed off on her rocket boots and lifted into the sky. "Did you think you could conquer me alone?"

Midori answered with a series of blasts from the laser pistols she was brandishing in both hands. Brainiac didn't bother to block the attack. The blasts bounced harmlessly off his broad chest as he pursued her with more amusement than malice.

Almost abstractly, he reached out again and a weapon rose out of his right forearm with a snap. He aimed it lazily at Midori; she had barely the time to feel relieved that he had missed, when an avalanche of rock began to tumble upon her from the cliff above. Still firing at Brainiac, who continued his ominously calm advance, Midori skirted the edge of the cliff, angling around it so she could continue to shoot while enjoying some small degree of cover. But he was suddenly on top of her, hand upraised, and Midori realized that the swing of his mighty arm would take off her head. She toed the rocket boots in desperation as his fist came swinging down, barely slipping out of the way as his knuckles slammed against the ground where she had been trapped a second earlier.

"Who did it to me?" he asked as he followed her into the air. "At the science museum. Not you?" he mused and Midori suspected he had asked himself this question a thousand times over the past year and a half. "The telepath then? I'd already defeated most of the others."

Fearing that Brainiac might go after Meera if she failed to stop him, Midori replied, "It was all of us." She blinked a few times, as if the sun had gotten in her eyes and then rocketed straight up the cliff, dodging a series of blasts from the gun perched on her pursuer's forearm.

His built-in boot jets were ten times as fast as hers; he was looming maliciously above her, forcing her back toward the ground. Midori whipped out a longer weapon, this one resembling a microphone boom more than a gun. In the time it took her to aim, one of his energy bolts slammed into her free shoulder, dislocating it and shattering her left collarbone. She squeezed the trigger and looked up at Brainiac expectantly, but it was Midori, not Brainiac, who plummeted onto the hard ground.

He hovered triumphantly above her as she grimaced against the stunning pain.

"An electro-magnetic pulse," he said in amusement. "But your pathetic little weapon doesn't seem to have hurt me, my audacious Coluan."

"No," Midori said weakly. "But you may want to check your force field."

She watched him sweep through his bodily systems with a start, furiously assessing the damage she had done, and in the fraction of a second it took him to complete this audit, a twin stream of heat burst through his chest.

"_Give up_," shouted the voice Brainiac hated more than any other in the galaxy. He whirled around to find himself facing Superman.

"Last chance," the Man of Steel told him coldly. He began positioning the Phantom Zone projector in front of his chest.

"That's right," said Brainiac, lifting both arms out toward his greatest enemy. "Last chance."

The liquid kryptonite jetted from his palms, forcing Superman to lower the projector and leap into the air, but as Brainiac started to laugh, a deafening boom sounded behind him. His mechanical eyes seemed to widen impossibly and with a sound as wrenching as fingernails on a blackboard, his body started collapsing upon itself, imploding as he started to howl in rage and terror. His scream seemed to last longer than physically possible, as his metallic shell drew into itself, compressing, while Midori and Superman watched in fascination, to the size of a soda can.

Midori reached down with her good hand, flipped a switch on the bazooka-like weapon she was holding, then aimed it at what remained of Brainiac. There was a strange, soft sound and then an explosion. Midori threw an arm up to shield her eyes. When she lowered it, there were tiny bits of metal raining down upon the mountain like green snowflakes.

"Gravity cannon," Midori explained as Superman gently helped her to her feet. "But I can reverse the fields."

"So I see," he said.

Their eyes met and Midori wondered for a moment if Superman thought her a killer. It didn't seem that way, but before she could ask, Meera's voice sounded in their heads, more urgently than Midori had ever heard it before.

_Superman. Go to the Grand Canyon and send Superwoman back here now. We need a doctor._

Superman had vanished before Meera could add that Midori should stay where she was. Wonder Woman was on her way to bring her to her husband.

* * *

In retrospect, it would have been faster for Superman to have scooped Roy into his arms and flown him to the nearest hospital, but Quiver, who had given Meera the order, had thought instinctively of her best friend.

One of the Phantom Zone escapees had just slammed Superwoman into a boulder when the telepath's voice forced itself into her groggy head. She had thought she'd heard another voice, high and furious – and possibly the clatter of an object against the canyon floor – but all Martha was sure about was that Roy needed a doctor.

She looked around the canyon and saw that the fugitives had launched themselves upon Gren and Superwoman reluctantly realized she could not leave the canyon until her father came to relieve her. That happened seconds later, as she was trying to pry the escapees from an unconscious Green Lantern. Superman smashed into the cluster of bodies, stunning one fugitive as his daughter spun into the other with a hook kick that probably hurt her more than it did the felonious flyer.

"Go," Superman told her. He had Gren tucked under an arm. Martha saw with relief that he was still breathing.

She looked helplessly at Batman and then back at her father. "Take care of him," she implored as Superman once again ordered her out of the canyon.

The things that she and Bruce had needed to say to each other, they had said again and again over the year they had been together. No matter what happened next, Martha knew, additional words were unnecessary. She shot off toward the Colorado Rockies, leaving behind the world's two finest heroes. It was now up to them to end the nightmarish battle that had started mere hours earlier as she had danced with her father.

* * *

Superwoman didn't think she had ever flown so fast; she made it to the Rockies in minutes and was kneeling beside Roy an instant later.

"So whattaya think?" he asked woozily, his head now cradled in Midori's lap. "Will I be able to play the violin?"

"They couldn't have amputated his sense of humor," Wally complained shakily as he studied Superwoman's bland face. He had arrived there with Meera moments before and was holding on fast to her hand.

"Grand Canyon… all cleaned up?" Roy asked her, as she ran fingers along his spine. His voice sounded even fainter. Midori stroked back his hair with a trembling right hand. Her other arm was pressed tightly against her side.

"Yeah," Martha lied as she gently probed his abdomen. Robin jerked toward her with a start. She groped at her dress, concealed by the holographic blue costume, and ripped away a piece of fabric.

"_Holy God_," he said, recognizing the strip of daffodil-colored cloth as she tightened it above the tourniquet Quiver had tied too close to the stump of Roy's leg.

"He'll be all right," Superwoman said, misinterpreting the reason for Tim's exclamation. She looked from Lian to Midori. "There's a Level One trauma center in Phoenix. I know it. They'll take good care of him there." Midori nodded anxiously and Superwoman got to her feet with Roy cradled in her arms.

"Wait," Roy told her. He reached out toward Quiver with his remaining hand. "You're in charge."

"_No_," she responded instantly. "Gren…."

"He's unconscious," Superwoman told her. "And you're ready."

And with a quick nod toward her battered teammates, she lifted Roy into the sky.

* * *

"We'll all head down to the hospital," the Flash said as they watched Superwoman disappear into the clouds.

Quiver, as if coming out of a fog, said, "No."

Everyone turned to her. "Only you," she said to Wally, her voice gaining strength as she continued to speak. "You take Midori. The rest of us –" she looked slowly around the circle of bloodied warriors. "We're going to help the teams that are fighting off the West Coast. When we get to the hospital, I want to be able to tell my father that this is over."

* * *

Many of the Phantom Zone escapees had been imprisoned by Superman's biological father, others, the Man of Steel had put there himself. He couldn't identify either of the two he was fighting, but as he edged them along closer to the spot where Batman had concealed himself with a grenade launcher, Superman recognized the arrogance.

The fugitives were possibly as strong as he was now and doubtlessly assumed this meant they could take him. But he had thirty-five years of experience on them and had spent that time honing his combat skills alongside the best fighters in the world – including, Superman realized grudgingly – the fearless man waiting patiently for him to bring the murderous felons close enough for him to get a shot at them.

It was just the two of them now. Batman had checked Gren's vital signs and ordered Blitz to take the Green Lantern to a hospital.

Superman snapped the side of his foot into one escapee's knee, then flung the felon's charging companion over his shoulder toward Batman. The Dark Knight stepped out quickly, launcher raised, and fired at the somersaulting Kryptonian. There was a _flttt_ as kryptonite-laced force field wrapped itself around the struggling fugitive.

Batman didn't even stop to watch him fall crashing into the canyon. He simply reached into his belt for another grenade. It was pure chance that Superman, now grappling with the last of Brainiac's minions, spun around as the Dark Knight was reloading. And it was pure adrenaline that gave the Man of Steel the strength to wrench away from the felon whose fingers were digging deep into his bicep. It was possible that Batman, who was never caught unaware, knew that the Joker was behind him. But he may not have realized, as Superman did, that the mad clown had just squeezed the trigger on a blaster with a default setting of a wide spread of electromagnetic radiation. And as Superman hurtled toward him, it did seem like Batman had moved away, as if to sidestep a bullet or a fine stream of laser energy, but what came at him was nothing like either of one those things. Superman could see the curtain of heat reaching toward his oldest ally, but he could fly no faster. As he barreled frantically toward his longtime comrade, he could feel the heat of the blaster arching around him and when he shouldered Batman out of the way, Superman knew with an aching heart that he would be burying another teammate.

But when he looked into Batman's dark blue eyes, they were startled and alive. Superman's gaze fell to the Dark Knight's right side; the armored fighting suit had been burned away and blisters were rising rapidly on his seared skin. Then their heads snapped toward the Joker, who stood oddly poised, the blaster still outstretched in his clenched hands, his features contorted, not in laughter, but surprise.

It wasn't until his head rolled back and the mad clown started to fall that Superman saw the blood gurgling out from the hole in the center of his chest. As the Joker toppled onto the ground, Superman turned back into the mouth of the canyon, where the remaining Phantom Zone escapee hovered, his eyes still smoking as he realized with frustration that in the confusing jumble of bodies, he had hit the wrong target.

Superman sprang into the air, hammering the fugitive with elbows, fists and feet. He drove knees into the felon's thighs and rammed a shoulder into his face, all the while dodging some punches and absorbing others from a man who now understood that he was fighting for his life.

The Man of Steel thought himself in the battle alone; Batman had dropped the grenade when Superman barreled into him and he was too badly injured to reload the launcher. But, incredibly, as he traded blows with the Phantom Zone's last fugitive, Superman heard a deep voice shout, "Closer!" and with right hook to his opponent's jaw, he sent the felon flying toward the edge of the canyon.

Batman _had_ been too wounded to reload the launcher, but not so badly hurt that he could not clip the grenade to a batarang. The flat black object soared gracefully into the villain's heaving chest, releasing the kryptonite-laced force field that ended the fight for the Grand Canyon.

Superman touched down beside Batman and swallowed back nausea at the sight of his blistered arm and chest. "You're out of this. I'm taking you to a hospital."

Batman walked over to the Joker, using a boot to turn the madman's head so he could inspect his distorted face. "His heart beating?"

"No."

"Brain function?" Batman asked, apparently not satisfied that a still heart was irrefutable proof of death.

"None," Superman said. "He's gone. Let me take you –"

"No," Batman said stubbornly. "Patch me up. This fight's not over."

Superman gave him a strange look. "Actually, I think it is."

* * *

He was right. Dozens of the Earth's protectors – super-powered and otherwise – had joined forces with the Pan-African team to finish off the few remaining Kryptonian fugitives. Afterwards, they gathered the two dozen sickened captives for Superman to return to the Phantom Zone. He did this quickly, returning in minutes to the Grand Canyon, where Batman stood scrutinizing the Joker's motionless body.

"He's still dead," Superman assured him. "So's Brainiac."

Batman tilted his chin toward his teammate and said almost contemplatively, "I think I need to go to the hospital."

Getting him there wasn't easy. The handhold he usually wore during flights had been burned away and Superman had trouble hanging onto him without causing him further injury. And Batman's request for medical help turned out to be a ploy: As soon as they got to the hospital, he stormed past the burn unit and into the trauma bay where he demanded to know the whereabouts of the Justice League's doctor. Only after a triage nurse informed them that Dr. Kent was in an operating room, monitoring Arsenal's surgery, did Superman manage to get his colleague to hold still long enough for a pair of residents to hurriedly apply burn dressings.

Word of their presence must have made its way into the operating room theater. Martha was hurrying out of the OR, tearing away her surgical mask, as Batman and her father stepped off the elevator. She was wearing bloodstained gray scrubs and a worried look, which segued into alarm the moment she saw the dressings plastering her lover's right side.

She somehow managed to throw herself into his arms without banging into his bandages.

"I heard you were hit," she said anxiously as his good arm snaked around her waist to draw her closer.

"Only a little," he said,leaning back to inspect her face for injuries. "How's Roy?"

Martha stepped back, looking first into his eyes and then into Superman's. "Bad. But he'll live. I – I should go back."

Batman nodded and told her he'd be in the OR waiting room.

With a torn look, Martha started walking toward the operating room. Then she stopped, turned back, glanced around the empty corridor and flung herself back into Batman's arms, kissing him passionately before gazing defiantly at her father and marching back into the operating room.

Batman watched her disappear behind the swinging white door. Then he looked over at the Man of Steel, who was studying him with weary eyes.

"I guess we'd better talk," Superman said.

* * *

**Next Chapter:** _Enduring Justice _

* * *


	20. Chapter 20

* * *

**Author's Note:** No one gets there alone. In the year it took to write the _**Truth and Justice**_ trilogy, beta reader _arg914_ and my son and technical advisor, _The Five Foot Ninja_, provided constructive advice and unflagging support. There are no words strong enough to express my gratitude. Profound thanks also to reviewers Author376, whose generosity and kindness are unparalleled, Batfan7, who saved a fictional life and in doing so changed the course of this story, LifeBringsMeOnlyTears, GothikStrawberry, jenetri, Naga, LJP, CalypsoHunter, al4, Sakura999, SarahC4321, Naitch03, AngerManagementIssues, Katemary77, HesterPryne, Sarpedon, jvogel54321, IVIaedhros and RandomDave. Your encouraging words will be forever remembered.

* * *

Bruce tapped his driver's license idly against the counter as the pinched nurse shrugged into a powder blue button-down sweater and muttered about the air conditioning. It was cranked pretty high, he supposed, but the cool air felt good against the burns healing under his long-sleeved shirt.

The nurse checked the plastic ID against a list of names, then studied Bruce suspiciously before directing him down a short, bright corridor that led to a small wing of private rooms. The door to the second room on the left was propped open. Bruce stood next to it for a moment, listening to the pair of warm voices inside before rapping twice and stepping inside.

"Hey!" Roy shifted himself up against his pillows and offered Bruce a welcoming grin.

Midori was sitting by her husband's left side, her left arm encased in a bulky cast. She smiled at Bruce, tilting her cheek upward as he bent to kiss her, but she did not let go of Roy's hand.

"So." Bruce's eyes moved across the small room. "This is the honeymoon suite."

Roy laughed. "Beats the hell out of the hotel room we reserved in Honolulu." He grinned at Midori, who had already started to evaluate this statement for its possible humor. "Huh, baby?"

"I think the room in Hawaii was a little bigger," she replied, releasing his hand momentarily to scratch under the wrist of her cast.

"We'll get there," Roy promised, recapturing her hand. "You'll have your way with me in the tropics, yet." He looked back up at Bruce. "Food's better here than at the hospital in Phoenix."

Martha had ordered Roy's transfer to Metropolis Medical Center as soon as his doctors declared him stable enough to withstand the flight. Her hometown hospital boasted the most advanced prosthesis technology in the country. The team of specialists treating Roy included the surgeon who had helped her save Bruce's leg.

Bruce pulled a chair up to Roy's bed. "You feeling all right?"

"Yeah." Roy's smile was tired, but genuine. He raised his hand without untangling it from Midori's and indicated the gleaming gold band around his finger. "At least they didn't get my ring hand." He brought Midori's fingers to his lips and the newlyweds shared a tender look.

Lifting his chin toward a pair of prostheses – an impressively human-looking hand and foot strewn carelessly onto the top of a small dresser, Bruce asked, "Those the new body parts?"

"Shhh," Roy whispered as his wife started to scowl. "We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Midori's going to whip me up something ten times better."

"They might as well give him a peg leg," she said indignantly. "And a hook."

Bruce tried not to smile. It looked like the manufacturers of Earth's prosthesis technology were about to get the kind of boost its dog-grooming industry now enjoyed.

"I'm gonna get her to build a TV remote into my new hand," Roy confided. "So I can just wiggle my fingers and change the channel."

"That sounds useful," Bruce replied. "Think you'll be able to handle a bow again?"

As Midori nodded confidently, Roy replied, "I'll be able to. Not I sure will."

That wasn't a surprise: Wally had announced his retirement at the debriefing Roy held in his hospital room the day after Brainiac's attack. It was only natural that the wounded archer – who had months of rehab ahead of him no matter how sophisticated Midori's prostheses turned out to be – might consider joining his best friend in the pursuit of a quieter life.

"Maybe just to teach my kid," Roy added meditatively.

Bruce looked inquiringly at Midori. She blushed a dark jade and shook her head: Not yet.

"So when are you getting out of here?" Bruce asked.

Roy gave a small shrug. "A week. Maybe less. They don't like to let the high-profile patients go until they're sure they're stable. I wish I could have gotten out of here a few days ago," he added solemnly. "And made it to those funerals."

Bruce's eyes shifted back to the lifeless mechanical hand. "The rest of us did. You were ably represented by your wife and daughter." As Midori flashed a melancholy smile, he added, "And Kurdoon's culture doesn't hold the same sort of mourning rites."

"I heard he was something," said Roy, his voice filled with admiration and loss. "Taking both of those murdering bastards with him." He looked up at Bruce. "How are you?"

"OK," Bruce said, glancing down at his right side. "Most of the burns ended up looking a lot worse than they actually were." He ignored Roy's skeptical look. "Martha's going to drop by later," he said. "She and her mother had a couple of errands to run."

Roy squinted at him. "What, you're not just up here to visit me? Oh, my God," he added. "It's Sunday."

Bruce felt his face grow warm in the cooled air.

"You're here for Sunday dinner," Roy proclaimed gleefully.

"Yeah," Bruce admitted.

"So, you and Clark all right?" Roy asked

"We're working on it." Bruce got to his feet. "Martha and I are having a barbecue back in Gotham on the Saturday after next. I need you to be there."

It was something that they had planned before the Harpers' wedding and in the aftermath of the attack had considered postponing. Ultimately, they decided that nothing was needed quite so much as an occasion that would bring everyone together. In light of the conversation he had had with Martha earlier that morning, Bruce was glad they had chosen to go forward.

Roy gave the end of his right arm an uncertain glance and said, "We'll try to make it."

"There's no 'try to make it'," Bruce told him. "You'll be there or you'll answer to Lois. She's organizing this thing."

Roy eyed Bruce suspiciously as he returned his chair to its place against the wall. "Why? Is something special going to happen at this barbecue?"

"Just be there." He walked around the bed to kiss Midori goodbye, then he and Roy exchanged a wry left-handed handshake. Bruce was just about to step out of the room, when he turned around with an almost thoughtful expression and leaned against the door frame.

"By the way," he said to Roy. "I earned 400 million dollars last year. I'll take a check."

Roy's face paled against a thatch of fading freckles. Bruce flashed him a modest smile, pushed off against the cool metal frame and rounded into the sunlit hallway.

* * *

A burst of wind stirred stray granules of stone from the gargoyle's worn gray head. Batman scrutinized the scowling statue's grainy pate and thought that it might not be a bad time to have all of Gotham's granite guardians refinished. It was as mild a winter as anyone could remember: good weather for that kind of work.

As the rising sun spilled across the Narrows, he made a note to get in touch with someone from the Wayne Foundation's civic improvement group. They were always scouting out those sorts of projects – the ones that combined community service with the arts and even a little local history.

He watched, expectantly, as the lone functioning lamppost switched off at the far end of Crime Alley. Time to go home. Batman unhooked his grappling gun and strode to the south end of the roof, stopping abruptly when he saw the tall shadow slanting out from a smokestack just behind him.

"I knew you were there," he said without turning around.

"I'll bet you did." Superman took a step towards him, grinning. "Happy New Year, Batman."

The Dark Knight acknowledged his words with a nod. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent had exchanged warmer wishes a few days earlier, at a small New Year's gathering in Metropolis.

"What brings you to Gotham this early in the morning?" Batman asked, as the two men walked toward the center of the rooftop, where they would be less likely to be seen.

Superman assumed the face of Clark Kent, indulgent father. "Just dropped off a freezer full of those milkshakes Martha's been chugging down." He gave a short laugh and shook his head. "Good thing she's got my metabolism."

Some months earlier, Martha had started craving peanut butter and chocolate shakes from her favorite all-night diner in Metropolis. Bruce had arranged for a case of them to be flown in every week. He decided not to share this information when he saw how pleased Clark seemed with himself.

"Thanks," Batman said.

"Of course, she could go there herself if you would let her fly," Superman said archly.

He was teasing, but Bruce couldn't help repeating his side of an ongoing three-way debate between himself, Clark and Koriand'r, both of whom thought his concerns were unfounded and possibly a little silly.

"We don't know what kind of effect high-speed flight would have on the baby," he said."Martha agrees with me." Or she was humoring him. Either way, she had promised to hold off on flying for the duration of her pregnancy.

"Yeah, well, your wife spoils –" Superman perked an ear, frowning. "Someone just cocked a gun."

Bruce Wayne snapped back into Batman. "Where?"

"Here." With a quick jerk of his chin, Superman indicated the floors beneath them. "In this building."

The old Masonic Temple had been vacant for years, but it was well secured. Batman couldn't remember the last time someone had succeeded in breaking into it. He felt an almost personal sense of violation at the presence of intruders.

"What floor?" he asked.

Superman's eyes appeared to sweep back and forth over a patch of roof just in front of his feet. Having seen him do this before, Batman knew he was combing through the building floor-by-floor.

"Two guys moving from the second floor to the third," Superman said. He looked up at Batman and raised an inviting eyebrow. "Shall we?"

Superman could have scooped up the burglars, dumped them at a police station and landed back on the roof while Batman was still forming an answer. But the Man of Steel had always been respectful of his colleagues' territories, Batman reflected as he glided down the steep stairwell. And Clark hated to seem like a show-off.

Batman moved cautiously into the dark third floor landing, listening for activity. He was reaching for the knob of the fire door when he heard the cry of surprise, the scrambling and then the shot. He crouched low as he threw open the door and another shot echoed through the gutted building.

The fight itself lasted seconds. Superman dropped one of the burglars with a finger flick and waited patiently for his companion to snap the heel of his hand into the second intruder's chin. Batman didn't wait to watch his opponent fall. He walked, frowning, back to the fire door.

There was a small bullet-hole a few centimeters to the left of the knob. Almost carelessly, Batman ran a hand across the side of his mask, stopping to finger a slight tear in the fabric above his temple.

Superman was immediately beside him, his eyes moving from the hole in the door to Batman's fingers.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

When Batman didn't answer, Superman added, "Armor-piercing. But – neither of them took a shot in this direction. It must have ricocheted –" He stopped. There was only one thing in the dilapidated room that could have repelled an armor-piercing bullet. "– off me," he whispered. "Bruce –"

Batman jerked off a glove and brought his hand back to the tiny rip, his faintly curious expression turning rapidly to one of disbelief. People had been trying to kill him for half a century and now a stray bullet had nearly ended his life. Had nearly left his unborn child without a father.

"I'm out of my mind," he said incredulously. He started tearing at his mask where it met the top of his fighting suit.

Superman grabbed his wrists. "What are you doing?" he asked, glancing back to make sure their captives were still unconscious.

"I quit," Bruce said flatly.

"Good," Superman said, with a little amusement and a lot of relief. "But save the strip show for the cave. I don't want to have to arrest Batman for indecent exposure at the end of his last night out."

* * *

Lakeeta Reardon stuck her bare feet in the shoes her husband routinely left by the door, pulled the thick blue terrycloth bathrobe tightly across her chest and opened her front door. She braced against the frigid morning winds and made a pained face as she spotted the rolled-up newspaper lying in the middle of her yard. In her attempt to get to it swiftly and then retreat into the warmth of her house, she nearly tripped over the large box lying on her doorstep.

Reardon studied the package. It was made of thin, white cardboard, like an oversized shirt box. She was sure as hell not expecting an early morning laundry delivery.

Her husband was in the shower. Reardon wasn't sure if it was safe to leave the porch for the time it would take to warn him to get out of the house. He wouldn't leave anyway, without her.

The police commissioner nearly jumped when her cell phone rang; she didn't remember putting it in her bathrobe pocket. Instinctively, she knew that answering the phone would not activate the box of explosives that was probably lying a foot away from her. She had barely pressed the small receiver to her ear when she heard the low, terse voice and found herself able to breathe again.

"Batman," Reardon said.

"It's not a bomb," he told her. "Commissioner…."

"Yes?" she asked, squatting down to get a better look at the package.

"Thank you." He cut the line.

Reardon gave the phone a puzzled stare – she wasn't sure what Batman had to thank her for – then slipped it into her bathrobe pocket. Almost experimentally, she gave the lid of the box an upward tug. It came free immediately.

A stream of morning sunlight splashed onto a patch of black fabric. Reardon drew a short, sharp breath. She was looking at Batman's fighting suit.

She pressed a thumb and forefinger against her eyes and then gazed again at the neatly folded costume. A sturdy square of white paper had been placed upon the dark emblem in the center of the chest plate. Reardon recognized the writer's firm cursive scrawl. His message was characteristically brief:

_Keep fighting_

Reardon felt a sudden surge of loneliness but found it inexplicably replaced by a wave of hope. Batman would not leave his city unless it could be safely left.

She hoisted up the heavy box, taking care not to jostle the garment inside. The resilient black fabric had withstood the force of bullets, knives, acids and bombs, but Reardon carried it as though it was the most fragile treasure: She knew what she held in her arms that morning was the spirit of Gotham City.

* * *

Alfred straightened over the tall pile of strawberries he was slicing as Bruce walked into the kitchen through the service door.

"Commissioner Reardon received the package?" Alfred asked. Bruce shrugged out of his ebony cashmere coat and draped it carefully across the back of a kitchen chair. He looked over at the older man and nodded.

"How did she react?" Alfred asked.

"A little floored," Bruce said, brushing a small black thread from the chest of his charcoal sweater.

The elderly butler stepped out from behind the kitchen island. "And how do you feel?"

"A little floored," Bruce admitted.

Although he had responded to Bruce's retirement announcement with hearty approval, uncertainty – and a trace of sadness – now drifted across Alfred's withered feathers.

"So it's over then?" he asked. "Our magnificent adventure?"

"It is," Bruce said. "But don't plan on going anywhere. I can't handle the next one without you."

On Alfred's baffled look, Bruce added. "Being a father. I plan to learn from the best."

Tears blurred the old man's pale blue eyes. Bruce gave him a self-conscious grin. The two men stood in awkward emotion, not quite sure what they were supposed to do next.

"Would it _kill_ you two to hug each other?" Martha, as teary-eyed as Alfred, stood against the swinging kitchen door, her slender arms folded over her jutting belly.

"Probably," said Bruce, as Alfred, turning away, replied, "Most assuredly" and hurried into the pantry.

As her husband ambled over to join her at the kitchen door, Martha studied the smile hiding in the faint lines around his eyes. "You're OK with this?"

Bruce's fingers grazed the curve of her belly and his smile traveled to the corners of his mouth.

"Yes," he said firmly. "My kids don't grow up without a father."

Martha flattened his hand against the rounded flesh just above her navel. He felt a tentative poke from the other side of her swollen tummy and laughed softly.

"You're already planning our second one?" she asked.

"Thought I'd give Roy a chance to go double or nothing," Bruce said, running his thumb across the spot where the baby had stirred, as if he could coax it to move again.

Martha chuckled. "It's a good thing you're used to sleepless nights. You've got a lot of them coming up."

"A lot of good nights," he said, lifting his eyes to hers.

They would be nights filled with love instead of violence, life instead of death. Nights with a family no one could take away from him.

Martha's fingers tightened around Bruce's hand. "They will be," she promised. "Good nights."

* * *

Superman had been delayed by a hostage situation in a school just outside of Portland, but a quick look through walls of the Watchtower told him that the meeting hadn't started. Everyone seemed to be there, though, milling around in the conference room. They were probably waiting for him.

He strode down the hallway at close to normal speed, needing the time to transition from crisis mode to a mindset that was a little more serene. He could still hear terrified mothers whimpering behind a hastily drawn police line. Superman had managed to get all of the children out safely, but incidents like these always left him rattled.

A few parents had vowed not to bring their children back to the school. It was close enough to the end of May that they'd probably get away with it, Superman thought as he stepped into the conference room.

"Hey!" Roy Harper, clad in jeans and a golf shirt, strode across the room to greet him. Superman could detect neither a limp in his friend's gait, nor anything mechanical in the warm clasp of his hand.

"Since when do they let civilians up here?" the Man of Steel asked with a grin.

"I'm not a civilian," Roy replied loftily. "I'm a consultant."

He nodded across the room, where Wally, also in street clothes, stood talking to Blitz and Gren. "Mr. West has also agreed to return in an advisory capacity."

Superman was glad to hear it. He hadn't seen Roy or Wally on the Watchtower for close to a year. Roy had spent a lot of that time in physical therapy; Wally had been training his younger son, who was soon to join the Titans. The League's new leaders were doing an exemplary job, Superman thought. But the team could only benefit from the decades of experience and wisdom these two veterans had to share.

"So," Roy asked. "How's your granddaughter?"

Superman's face burst into a rapturous smile. "She's _beautiful_."

"Started to fly yet?" Roy asked.

"She's only six weeks old," Clark reminded him. "But it looks like she's going to be stronger than Martha."

Roy inclined an orange eyebrow, "How can you tell?"

"She grabbed onto Clay's finger and kind of… broke it," Superman said. "And if you stand her in her crib, she can stay up on her own."

Roy whistled. "Time to break out the silver bracelet for little Jordan Ella."

Superman nodded. "Cadmus said they'd have one ready in another day or two. And they're developing a more flexible band; something that will grow along with her."

"Good," Roy said. "Midori and I have started working on a playmate for her. Don't want my kid coming home from Wayne Manor with a black eye. Bruce is handling retirement a lot better than I thought," he added.

"I think he was a little bored until the baby came," Superman said. He saw that Quiver had broken off her conversation with Meera and Wonder Woman and was heading over to the conference table. "But he's got his hands full now, between being a dad and helping Martha with her research and training, um… Dragonfly."

Having overheard this last part, Gren stepped into the conversation. "I can't believe Martha named herself after an insect," he said. "Cool costume, though. She say when she's coming back?"

"She says soon." Superman shook his head. "But I don't know. She's going to find it hard enough to balance her family life with work and taking care of Gotham."

Quiver had started waving people over to the conference table. "Gren," she called. "Let's get started."

As Gren sauntered toward the end of the table opposite Lian, Superman saw Wally zip toward the back of the room and grab a pair of folded lawn chairs.

"Here you go," he holding one of the chairs out to Roy, who nodded with mock gravity, settled into the nylon lattice and held out his left hand. A second later, he clutched a bottle of non-alcoholic beer so cold that Superman could see the ribbon of frost wafting into the air. Wally, sitting beside his friend, held a second ersatz lager.

"These things are foul," he informed an amused Superman. "But our mighty leaders –" he looked from Gren to Quiver, who were now visibly waiting for the Man of Steel to join them. "– need clear heads. Even from their esteemed advisors."

Superman tried not to laugh as he took his place at the table. They were a good team, he thought. Almost as good as the last one. His eyes moved from Quiver, who was calling the meeting to order, to Meera and Midori, who were either side of her. Wonder Woman, who had agreed again to fill in for Martha, sat beside Blitz, their newest member. Wally's daughter was looking intently at the tabletop, where Midori had recently installed an upgraded monitor.

Gren scowled at the group as Quiver turned the meeting over to him. "I'm surrounded by women," he complained.

Superman leaned forward. "Do I look like a woman to you?"

Before Gren could stammer an answer, Blitz announced, "Uh-oh," and a Claxton-like alarm began to bleat. She palmed a switch and the horn went silent. Everyone was on their feet, waiting.

"Marauding robot army," she reported, squinting at the screen. "They just got into some mammoth weapons stores in the middle of Siberia."

Quiver looked across the table at Gren. "Let's go," she said. "Groundhogs on the shuttle."

Midori stopped to give her husband a quick kiss, then raced to join her teammates on the _Javelin-13_. Gren nodded to Superman and Wonder Woman; they were gone before Roy and Wally could raise their bottles in heartfelt salute.

The players had changed – they would again as the years passed by too quickly for anyone's liking – but the mission endured: Defend the weak, protect the innocent and, occasionally, save the world. It was a straightforward task, but never an easy one. There would always be a price in battered hearts, torn limbs and ended lives.

But it would get done, every time, as long as there was a Justice League.

* * *


End file.
